Where is the Audacity?

Yesterday evening, members from the group Tucson Community for Change organized a peaceful demonstration for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The group is asking the representative to support a public option in health care reform. A representative for Ms. Giffords collected the flowers, upon which the organizers tied letters and personal stories in fighting for adequate care.



I have not had much in the way of health insurance throughout much of my life. I was fortunate to have military coverage in early childhood. When my parents divorced, however, my mom's employer did not offer health care coverage and I remember needing to tough through many illnesses with bed rest, chicken soup, and hot tea. The last time I received any kind of significant health care was in high school when I had suffered a seizure in algebra class. I underweat CAT scans and saw a neurologist at our nearby hospital. Several hours of "treatment" and a number of puzzled looks later, I was handed a bill and sent along my merry way. After my mom had been threatened by a collection agency to repay the balance right away, what little I had saved up for school books for the following semester went immediately toward the debt. Only in health care can you get no treatment or meaningful service and are expected to pay for a job well done.

Health care was a very popular issue during last year's presidential campaign with the debate over whether a free-market tax cut or a more thoroughgoing government effort would be necessary in establishing health care reform. Haunted by the dispatch of Clinton's efforts for reform, Democrats today are, if anything, fearful and hesitant. Politicians are strongly divided whereas the American public could not be more clear: the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that a combined 83% of those sampled somewhat or strongly favor a government-run public option in health care.

I cheered when Obama issued the following statement (thanks, Lean Left), point blank:

Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

Obama just proved in one fell swoop that, despite his assumption of the office of President, he has a rather common-sense way of looking at the issue.

"Change!" "Choice!" Despite the path to get there, everyone seemed in agreement last year about how important it is for Americans to be able to shop and get coverage suitable to their needs. McCain deluded himself into thinking that, like car insurance or that spiffy new album available on iTunes, health care providers would provide all the details, information, and pricing on the front end and that we could make our picks accordingly. The real irony in the words "free market" is that those driven by profit would do well to constrain information and accessibility, thus compromising the quality of choices we do have.

This is the same free market that doles out hundreds and thousands of pages of fine print they hope the populace won't read. This is the same free market that executes economic leverage, absorbs competition, and skirts around monopolistic practice. So, why should I put any less trust in a government-run operation when the private sector already left disproportionate numbers of the lower income, poor, minority designation a long time ago?

In all seriousness, I don't know the answer to that question. Bureaucracy in any set of stripes is problematic at times.

I am thoroughly frustrated that the same doctors and nurses and medical staff who uphold Hippocratic principles to do no harm petition the lobbying agencies who bed the politicians and court them into resistance with the promise of campaign financing. The people get them elected, but the money continues to do all the talking. Every now and then, people like Obama get fed up with the nice talk and say, what gives? A Senator gets an incomparable level of health care in return for years of service and a rather cushy job, whereas everyday blokes like myself have to scrounge up co-payments when we get tired of soup and tea. Conservatives place hands over breasts before the altar of the free market, yet are unwilling to offer a true test. And we're not innocent either. We are duped into believing the horror stories about Canadian and European services which are certainly not perfect, yet we are the only first-world industrial country that continues to lag behind Costa Rica and Haiti.

Seriously. Just an inch above Slovenia.

Recommended reading:
Pew Research poll on health care (courtesy of Daily Kos)