Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR2009072102712.html?referrer=emailarticle

A year ago, most of America seemed convinced that healthcare reform was imperative. Would we prefer Hillary’s plan or Barack’s? The debate was furious, but most people considered it intolerable that 47 million Americans had no health insurance.

You’ll never convince me that things have gotten better since then. Employment, through which most Americans receive health insurance, has plummeted. In most states, unemployment hovers around ten percent. President Obama says that 14,000 people lose their health insurance every day. COBRA payments, through which the unemployed can extend insurance for eighteen more months, are often prohibitive. Strapped for tax revenue, many states keep tightening the reimbursement of Medicare and Medicaid costs to providers. (I chronicled in an earlier post called Strong Medicine how these cuts finally demolished a business that had been in my family for more than a hundred years.)

Follow up:

So what happened? How can a new CNN poll claim that eight out of ten Americans are happy with their health care? You have to wonder who they’re talking to. The answer, I suspect, is people like you and me. And we ought to wonder at our complacency.

I’m grateful that people I know with serious health problems are being treated with care that is both cutting edge and compassionate. I’ve had excellent care myself even though I left the corporate world some ten years ago, because my former employer allowed me to continue my health insurance by paying reasonable premiums until I reached, gulp, Medicare. I’m truly grateful, but I’m always uneasy, because the courts have ruled that the supplemental insurance I receive is the company’s option, not mine.

Even as I enjoy top-notch care, I’ve seen my daughter struggle through long waiting periods each time she changes jobs, and her coverage is always minimal and spotty. A couple I know in their eighties lost supplemental insurance and a pension on which they relied when the nonprofit where she spent her career took a plunge. A single friend declared bankruptcy after she contracted two kinds of cancer and couldn’t keep pace with a demanding job. Then there’s the friend with a chronic illness who spends hour after hour negotiating for pre-approval with insurance providers for treatment that doctors recommend. Anecdotal, you might say, but these are educated people for whom our society is said to work best.

Members of Congress, of course, enjoy premium health care coverage for life, which is one reason some might not experience this crisis in any real sense. If they recess without passing this legislation, it’s too bad we can’t deny them health care until they do.

In June, I heard a radio interview with a former Clinton aide who said that the Obama attempts to reform health care were up against the same resistance that the Clintons faced, the reluctance of people who were satisfied with their personal situation to press for change.

I found this annoying, since it discounts the enormous pressure, subtle and overt, of the insurance and drug lobbies. He seemed to be rationalizing inevitable failure before the debate was fully underway; was this argument simply part of the propaganda effort? Or are we paralyzed by complacency and self-interest?

I found chilling a column by Harold Meyerson that appeared yesterday in the Washington Post and several other places. He asks: “Suppose our collective lack of response to Hurricane Katrina wasn't exceptional but, rather, the new normal in America. Suppose we can no longer address the major challenges confronting the nation. Suppose America is now the world's leading can't-do country.”

It’s a scary thought, but after listening to various Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats engage in what can only be called obstructionism, I’m wondering if Meyerson has a point.

Republicans have warned that this will be the president’s Waterloo, the battle he loses with everything at stake, but as he wearily pointed out last night in his press conference, it’s not about him. And it isn’t. Maybe it’s about whether or not, having elected an agent of change, we citizens are willing to risk a little more uncertainty in order that the less powerful among us can be cared for. Maybe it’s about whether or not we have ceded to corporations the power we once accorded our elected government. Maybe it’s about whether or not we will remind those elected officials that they haven’t yet earned a vacation.

Even if you have decent health care coverage, and, especially if you are represented by someone who opposes reform, please pick up the phone or send an email letting that senator or representative know that you’ll hold him or her responsible if we fall back on the status quo. And, if you’re in an income category that might be taxed in order to pay for reform (the limits have been stretched to $500,000 for an individual and $1 million for a couple) I hope you’ll let Congress know that you’ll willingly step up to the plate.

The healthcare hurricane season has just begun, and the levees are failing already.