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The long, downright ugly and highly partisan debate about changing the health care system in America was very personal for me. As a trained journalist, I don’t wake up in the morning thinking about an issue purely from the viewpoint of what it means to me. That would interfere with work and rational thinking. In fact, I have hardly considered the impact these matters have had on my life for a long time. If they do cross my mind, it is usually just a momentary, passing thought.
If there had been better health care in America, however, my entire life would be different. Everything. I wouldn’t, in all likelihood, be sitting where I am, typing these words, living in the house where I live. My life would be different in almost every way. I can hardly imagine how different, but it surely would have been total.
I had a younger brother born with a birth defect and without health insurance. The burden of paying those medical bills during his short eight years of life fell on my dad. It crushed his dreams, limited his choices and ultimately led to the destruction of my parents marriage and many difficult situations and choices for my older brother and myself. I was essentially on my own from around 14 years old, my dad not being very skilled or even attentive to the idea of what it takes to be a single parent. He, in turn, had been raised by his mother alone, so he had missed out on the learning experience of two parents himself.
By the time my father decided to pursue his dream of leaving pipeline construction work and running his own small ranch in Oklahoma, he was faced with something like four hundred forty thousand (in today’s dollars) of medical bills. My parents were deeply grateful for the care my younger brother, Robert, got at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, they made payment agreements and sent money in on a regular basis, but it was a fairly futile effort. There was just too much to pay and start a new enterprise at the same time.
My father’s lifelong dreams were limited, altered, by the fact that he needed to find a way to pay those medical bills. As a result, he was woefully unprepared, financially, to take on the burden of getting a farm and ranch operation up and running. It was a disaster. After a couple of years of trying, he first went back to work in the area. When that proved insufficient for income, he made the decision to go alone back to Pennsylvania where he could earn union wages. There wasn’t any specific plan, other than to get the family back on its feet.
All marriages have stress and faults and it seems probable to me that my parent’s marriage might have gone south at some point anyway. As it was, we were placed in a whirlwind of disaster. The farm failed. My younger brother’s problems continued and were made worse. We all moved back to Pennsylvania, but my mother did not stay long. A few years later, my brother died and I missed being there by his side because we had flown to see him just a week before and he was getting better, we were told. The March of Dimes paid a good share of his final medical expenses, since they had taken on birth defects by that point in the post polio era.
All of this is personal for me. I could easily be outraged that the Republicans scream about socialism, but don’t offer a single way for millions of our fellow citizens to get the health insurance they need. I don’t let myself get angry, I don’t remind myself every day of the toil the lack of health insurance took on my family growing up. I just don’t. When you are a kid, you roll with the punches and you search for a better day, believing you will find it, sooner or later. It does concern me, though, that companies like Wal-Mart have owners with multi-billion dollar net worth, but only offer health insurance plans that many of their workers can’t afford.
What also sets me off is the idea that all of this is just a game, just a way for cheap politicians to appeal to voters and keep their jobs. To 30,000,000 plus Americans who have no health insurance, it is not in anyway a game. For the other millions who are denied coverage when they are in the last months of life, who are lied to by insurance companies about “pre-existing conditions”, it is far more serious than politics. It seems that to insurance companies, life is a pre-existing condition that they don’t want to cover. For many years, they gotten away with anything they wanted. The people who pay the premiums, and depend on medical care, have little or no recourse. The new law might, just might, enable the government to force the issue in favor of people who need care. It might not be the best plan for the government to step in this way, but what is the alternative?
I am fairly astounded that people, shouting ideological “principles” that are largely made up for momentary use, can’t find any room to propose something, anything, that might help those who suffer. Dumping people into charity hospital emergency rooms at three in the morning with cancers that could have been found years earlier is not compassionate, it is mean, thoughtless and evil. How many millions die because they don’t get the medical attention they need in time? The answers, “Who cares?” and “ We can’t afford that”, no longer suffice.
There must be a way that a decent, well organized society can provide necessary medical care to all those who need it. Back when my brother was born in the 1950s, medical care was far less expensive. People went to see their neighborhood doctor for ten dollars a visit. Now, if you walk pass a hospital at a slow speed, someone might come running out with a bill for a thousand dollars. Checking in for a few days is bound to run up tens of thousands. None but the very richest could possibly manage to pay for long term care without facing bankruptcy.
It was very disappointing to me that this youngish new president was buried in criticism immediately when he opened his mouth and said, “health care reform”, before he had even proposed anything. He and his top aides let the whole process get way out of hand, thinking that Congress, of all places, could work out the details. This was a bad joke, told poorly. Congress did come up with a plan, but what a mess. Everything that is good, everything that is potentially good, was buried up to the eyeballs in shrill, shrieking partisanship. In America, 2010, it is no longer necessary to have a better idea, you just need to be able to make enough noise about someone else’s idea and keep the noise going.
The critics dove quickly into any proposals as the long reform battle started. They seized on things like the rather goofy idea that the government will, within a few years, start fining people who don’t buy health insurance. Who came up with that concept?
In America, we don’t require anything of our citizens, other than to live within the law, serve when demanded in true national emergencies and file tax returns on earnings. That’s it. Jury duty doesn’t even come round unless you register to vote. The State here does not own the citizens, we own the State. If you so choose, you can live from young adulthood to frail old person and not “report in” to your government. In England, the government can enter your house to see if you’ve installed central heating and add taxes accordingly. We don’t carry ID cards. No police officer is legally allowed to stop you on the street, without good reason, and demand an ID. Unlike most of the world, you don’t even have to show an ID when it is demanded. These are hard won freedoms and they should not be risked lightly, but whatever “threat” contained in the health care bill will easily be overruled by the courts or changed in a future Congress.
We should all remember, however, that there is a lot of good, or intended good, in the new legislation as signed. It is not creeping socialism. Instead, it is a massive ratification of the status quo, with bows and ribbons tied neatly around hopes for future change. The insurance companies have little to fear and people are staying up late these nights at those companies figuring out ways around the restrictions placed on them. The Republicans will make the most noise about defeating the reform measures, but the insurance companies will do the heavy work. If they can make a few billion dollars more by edging around the restrictions, they will.
I can’t get back my young life and I can’t get back the family I once had as a child. Everything was shattered. I do not define myself by those events. I was thrust into them in the same way I might have been swept up in a hurricane or earthquake. It just happened. I am certain that a lot of the determination and insistence on trying again and again in my adult life comes from being denied the shelter of a stable house and home as a child. There were losses and gains, like everything. I do remember, and keep in mind, that what happened resulted from preventable causes and that millions of people, right now, are facing similar, and worse, problems.
I am very proud of that, at last, we are going to try something as a nation to make things better. We are trying to come to terms with the fact that the way we have paid for medical care will not work in the future. Most importantly, I am highly pleased that the government will try to push back at big private corporations that have spent the last few decades mistreating American citizens and grabbing more power in ways that bandits would envy. Corporate power, without any legal restraint or intervention, has in recent years taken on a role of tyranny that previously was only in the realm of oppressive governments.
The battle is not over, it has just begun. We should pursue a decent, caring society which grows from our great, collective wealth and one that allows all people to have the advantages of enormous medical progress. This was one moment in time when doing something was, just barely, possible. Better leadership and better control of the message might have made for a bolder plan and less wear and tear on all of us. Obama’s victory has come at a dear price.
What, I ask, is the purpose of the vast American wealth? If we cannot assign it the task of feeding, clothing, housing and caring for all Americans, we wind up a rich nation dressed in rags. Yes, people will still have to work hard for what they get, but they will be a little less fearful of major disease and potential unemployment. We can’t afford that? Every effort to relieve financial pressures on the middle class in America for the last 80 or more years has been opposed, often vehemently, by the Republican party. I guess they can’t help themselves.
As we continue to work on and deal with these problems, we have to maintain our fealty to American freedoms, to vigorous enterprise and individual choice. In all things, balance. If there are mistakes in this experiment, they can be corrected. The time came when we couldn’t run from our health care problems any longer and even the Democrats found a small measure of backbone. . Now, it is time to make this thing work for all.
Doug Terry, 3.25.10
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