Last month, the Census Bureau estimated that 2.2 million people became uninsured in 2006.

With rising numbers of uninsured Americans, and the administration’s decision to wage war against children’s health insurance in hopes of stifling comprehensive health reform, we would be remiss not to examine the last time our nation seriously contemplated a system of coverage for all Americans.

In March 1993, Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.), the leader of a bipartisan group of senators trying to strike a deal on health-care reform, made a plea to his colleagues on the Senate floor, “We owe it to ourselves and to the American public to reduce the rhetoric .?.?. and to admit that compromise will be necessary to develop a [health] reform proposal that will make sense in our country.”

Chafee’s appeal still rings true. He reminds us of how we should be approaching the most pressing problems facing America. And he leads us to recognize the consequences of failure.

More than 14 years later, our nation’s health-care system remains broken. There are 47 million uninsured Americans, 7 million more than when Chafee took the Senate floor.

Unfortunately, more uninsured Americans are not the only evidence that Senator Chafee’s call went unanswered. The Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 people die each year because they do not have health insurance. Do the math. Since the last serious health-reform debate, almost a quarter of a million people have died simply because they do not have health coverage. Yet, the United States continues to spend more per capita than any other industrialized nation on a health-care system that is often inefficient, unfair and ineffective.

In short, our inability to compromise has already cost our nation hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.

The co-sponsors of the Healthy Americans Act (HAA) agree: There is an urgent need for health-care reform and have vowed to follow Chafee’s lead and lay the groundwork for a serious bipartisan conversation about health care.

There is much to learn from the failure of the Clinton-Era health care debates, especially the importance of bipartisanship and leadership. The co-sponsors of the HAA hope to do better than their predecessors.

The HAA represents the first bipartisan, bicameral health-reform effort in over a decade. Bipartisanship is necessary to ensure the sustainability of the system, and convince the American public that the plan is worthy of trust.

In December, the initiative’s lead sponsor, Sen. Ron Wyden (D.-Ore.), signaled willingness to compromise by introducing legislation that abandoned the liberal touchtone of government control in favor of private markets and tax reform. In addition, he was able to secure Sen. Bob Bennett (R.-Utah), a member of his party’s leadership, as his first Republican co-sponsor. Wyden’s commitment to covering everyone combined with Bennett’s conservative bona fides provide serious credibility on both sides of the aisle.

Furthermore, the co-sponsors of the HAA have shown brave political leadership in supporting a serious solution over political posturing, despite an election on the horizon. On the left, Wyden has confronted the single-payer wing of his party, and debunked those who would rather sit idle and wait for a Democrat in the White House. And on the right, some Republican senators have bucked an administration and a partisan rhetoric that denounces coverage for all Americans as “socialized medicine.”

Yet, perhaps the most salient lesson from the last attempt at health reform is that the consequences of a political stalemate are serious. The latest report from the Census Bureau reminds us that more and more Americans will join the ranks of the uninsured and die prematurely until something is done.

We cannot afford to ignore history, nor can we squander the growing momentum for change once again. As Chafee said on the Senate floor in 1994, as the Clinton-era debate deteriorated, “There are those who seek perfection and there are those who do not want to do anything. And if they can get together and defeat what others want to achieve, it seems to me it would be very, very unfortunate .?.?. I certainly hope we do not let this opportunity slip between our fingers.”

If history can truly teach by example, then the bipartisan group of HAA cosponsors will facilitate meaningful dialogue instead of divisive sound bites and prove we can do better this time.