October/November 2009
How to Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American
Howard Dean
Re-Indigenating Ourselves
Shaktari Belew
Learning to Make Wise Use of Fear
Crystal Arnold
Community: The Structure of Belonging
Peter Block
Eating is an Agricultural Act
Michael Pollan
Serious Health Problems Associated With Long Term Cell Phone Use
Environmental Working Group
Eyes and Vision
Peter Moore
Francis of Assisi, Yogi and Saint
Charlotte Nuessle
Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain
By Deborah Mokma
The idea that life is about relationships has made more sense to me lately. Understanding that connections with those beyond family and friends—the community in which I reside, the country as a whole, even the planet—can also be considered relationships has been an awesome realization. So, if we are all connected, who should we consider unworthy of our care? Or, for that matter, unworthy of adequate health care? Seems like the answer should be obvious, or would be if profit and greed were not involved in the equation. As I follow efforts to reform the health care system in this country I am dismayed time and again that there are those who do not have a problem with denying their fellow humans such a basic right.
But, although it may appear otherwise, there is still hope that change can indeed take place. There aren’t enough Republicans in Congress to block the public health insurance option unless enough Democrats are willing to help them do it, like last September when three Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee broke ranks and voted against the public option. But, according to MoveOn.org and many other analysts, no matter what the headlines say we can still achieve a public option in the full Senate and House if we, the people, make sure Democrats who side with Big Insurance face consequences with their constituents.
Most Democrats on the Finance Committee did vote for amendments sponsored by Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) to add the public option to the bill. Rockefeller stated “Our job is to protect the American people, not protect insurance company profits. The American people have asked for real solutions that protect their families and their economic security—a public option does just that. The public option is on the march, we are going to keep at this ... until we succeed, because we believe in it so strongly.”
That’s the kind of bold, progressive leadership needed in Congress, but it won’t be enough if conservative Democrats and Republicans don’t fear political consequences from the voters back home for opposing real reform which includes a public option. When Florida Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson declared on the House floor “The Republican health care plan is this: Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly,” his GOP colleagues demanded an apology. Grayson returned and said “I would like to apologize, I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America.” Grayson’s comments, shocking but true, were based on a recent Harvard study which concluded that 44,000 Americans die annually because they lack health insurance.
Brad Reed, in his essay Why Getting Health Care Passed Is Insanely Difficult (AlterNet.org, 10/1/09), explains it this way: “Picture our health care system as a spider web at the top of a tall redwood tree: Both the public and the special interests know they can’t stay in the web forever, lest they be eaten. But at the same time, no one wants to be the first one to cut up their own part of the web for fear of falling to their deaths. And herein lies the problem with current reform efforts: While our health care system threatens to bankrupt us all, it remains enormously profitable for insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and hospital chains. Such key special interests have banded together to kill national health insurance plans time and time again, from the progressives’ proposals during the Wilson era to Truman’s health care plan in the 1940s to Clinton’s failed reform effort in the 1990s ... Special interests are working behind the scenes to make sure that Congress doesn’t snip out their goodies. The New York Times reported earlier this month that the pharmaceutical industry is fighting a provision that would fund studies to compare the effectiveness of their products for different treatments. Again, consider the implications of this: The drug companies want us to continue paying them top dollar for drugs that might not even work as well as advertised … The hospital lobby, meanwhile, is trying to kill a proposed Medicare-oversight board that would be charged with, you guessed it, trying to weed out inefficiencies in the system. Even though everyone acknowledges that our health care system is on a fiscally ruinous course, nobody wants to make the real sacrifices that would put it on a marginally more sustainable path.”
Well, nobody in the industry that is. Polls continue to show that a vast majority of Americans do want to see a public option, the kind of real change required to provide health care for all citizens. That’s why it’s up to all of us to make this happen. Please call your Congressional representatives and your Senators, write letters to the editors of local and national publications, talk to your family and friends and encourage them to do the same. This is too important to leave up to commercial interests.
