Health Care Reform Fantods

Remember when Holden Caulfield got the fantods? Or did he accuse others of having them? Anyway, I'm pretty sure I had a case yesterday morning when Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake sent me an e-mail urging me to phone Congress asking that they scuttle the Senate Health Care bill.

I admire Jane Hamsher. Writer, film producer, breast cancer survivor and burr under the status quo's saddle, she has ridden health care hard. Her blog Firedoglake is reliably smart and irreverent and often hilarious. She makes me want to do her bidding. This morning I couldn't, ergo the fantods.

Thank heaven for Twitter. Within half an hour a handful more smart people posted charts and links that calmed the roiling sea in my head. One of the few Twitter friends I have whom I've met in real life, Bumblebums, called Hamsher "a gadfly" and reminded me that less shrill voices are out there.

Some of those include Jon Cohn, senior editor at the National Review, and Dan Roam of BackoftheNapkin.com fame. May the gods and goddesses of political discourse bless Chris Bowers, too. His consistently thoughtful voice over at OpenLeft.com is like kryptonite to politically engendered anxiety.

All of these writers kept me from fretting. They made my work for SEIU and Change That Works seem right minded and good, not the naive waste of time my lesser angels had begun to hiss in my ear.

So, we traded health care reform for health insurance reform. So, it's only a modicum of reform. Click on Jon Cohn's piece and look carefully at his chart. He makes it clear that this reform is significantly better than the scalpel in the eye we have been experiencing for decades.

Update, 0940 23.Dec.09: Apparently other lefty liberals are feeling the same about Hamsher.

My Most Public Contribution to the Health Care Debate

Yes, this country has to have health care for all. The public option is already a compromise. I have said this or similar things to everyone who can tolerate my blather for months, maybe years.

When I met the organizers and activists who came to Maine to help us persuade our Senators of the wisdom of health care for all we started to work the phones, Interwebs, newspapers, parties and sidewalks. One day, Alex the poet, and SEIU organizer who runs a mean meeting, asked me if I would tell my tale of health care woe and intrigue on camera for his "bosses." Never a wallflower, I said, sure.

One evening a few weeks later the phone started to ring, Director Will Robinson called, Producer Edna Snowe-Jensen set up an interview and the next morning a gigantic truck full of film equipment was in my yard.

It turned out to be one of the hottest days of the summer. We had to close the house to keep the sound consistent. Despite the stifling humidity and heat, everyone was cheerful, encouraging and positive. Hardly anyone in the house had health insurance. Of the 11 people there that day, only the director, producer and I had decent coverage. Everyone else had out-of-reach deductibles or no insurance at all. If this ad works at all it is because everyone there was committed to the cause.



Remember, the public option IS the compromise. We cannot let hundreds of corporate lobbyists write health care legislation. Our lawmakers must do their jobs and represent our interests.

And the next person who complains to you about the cost of health care reform, ask him or her to outline the costs of doing nothing.

Secretary Sebelius Says Unequivocal Yes to Public Option

Though she said this at the Portland meeting, as opposed to the Bangor round table where I was a panel member, MPBN has the story. The elegant and articulate former Kansas governor shores up the public option in the first moments of the MPBN piece.

Here's more or less what I said to the Secretary and the 60 or so people gathered at Orono this afternoon:

Thank you Madame Secretary coming to Maine. Thanks to all the organizers who made this meeting possible. I am honored to have this opportunity.

First, I have to say that I am one of the lucky ones. I am healthy. I hope to be completing my sixth triathlon next Sunday morning. Two hundred or so of us lucky, healthy Mainers will swim a half-mile, cycle 26 miles and run 6.6 miles for the fun of doing it, because we can. Millions are not so lucky and way too many have lost, not only their health, but homes, businesses and ways of life because of our country's health care chaos--I cannot bring myself to call it a system.

I am lucky to have had in my mid-20s a type of cancer, cervical cancer, with a high cure rate, one of the highest. I am lucky to have lived nearly 25 years without a recurrence. Because I, like every cancer survivor, worry about recurrence, the fact that I could never, ever have a break in my health insurance coverage became an intrinsic part of my life. Access to health insurance determined what work I did, where I lived, my marriageability, and was put at risk by my divorce. Nevertheless, I am lucky to have had an education that, all told, enabled me to string together a life that included health insurance. As a teacher I know many are not so fortunate.

When I left British Airways, my job right out of college, and came home to Maine during my cancer mini-drama, I used COBRA. Even in the 1980s it cost thousands of dollars a year, but there was no way I could cancel it. I found work as a social editor, then reporter, for Rockland's newspaper and the jobs included insurance. Finally, I put my degree to work and taught English and dance for 12 years in a Lincoln County high school. I married, had a child in my 40s and left my teaching job, secure that my husband would support us. When I found I had no choice but to leave the marriage, my position as the single employee in my husband's lobstering venture evaporated.

Since 2003 I have patched coverage together through work and catastrophic policies with out-of-reach deductibles. It has not been pretty. More than once, by the time I got billed for a visit, test or procedure, the policy that originally was in force had been replaced by another. When I called the insurance companies, you would have though I had asked for ancient Sumerian tablets as I asked to reconstruct previous policies. Many times I have simply paid the bill rather than wrangle with the insurance companies or damage my credit rating further.

Now, because of the economy and my expensive teaching experience, I work as a long term substitute outside of contract for a school that has agreed
to pay my health insurance costs. I'm both lucky and grateful. Tens of thousands of others have not had my good fortune.

Dear Senator Snowe:

Despite the fact that you represent the State of Maine, about a three-hundreth of the American population, your position on the Senate Finance Committee gives you one sixth of the power to make the U.S. a healthier country by holding fast to a public option in health care reform.

Arguably because you are a Republican, your vote on the Senate Finance Committee has even more clout. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat vying for most Blue Doggy Dem ever, and you could perhaps come to a conclusion that will make health care available to everyone.

You may be wondering why more Mainers and Americans are not banging on your doors about the public option. You may be wondering why small Maine papers are not editorializing in favor of the public option. You may be wondering why the loudest voices are the obstructionist shrieks of those who already have all the health care they need. Or perhaps you know what we all know.

Mainers and Americans are busy and confused. School is about to start and we need to get our kids sneakers and pencil boxes. The swine flu is a distant May memory and everyone's relatively healthy before the rush of vectors about to exchange zillions of viral RNA and DNA next week. Most wonder how to buy Christmas presents in this economy. For many health care has been a nagging worry for decades. The current drama is only a sideshow.

Our local sources of information are tasked with covering municipalities, crime and courts, not health insurance graft and greed. Because of this dearth of information, most of us are not conversant in health insurance shenanigans like the arbitrary formulary changes. That's when insurance companies decide they will no longer pay for particular prescriptions and ill people must change drugs or go without. Many have never heard of rescission, when the insurance companies simply drop customers because they have become too expensive to cover. Too few Americans are familiar with the facts surrounding other countries' methods of providing health care and of our true, less than stellar, status in the world's health care standards. Our infant mortality rate is worst than Cuba's.

The loudest obstructionist voices are those in fear. Some, like current Medicare recipients, are afraid they will lose care, some are afraid they will pay more taxes, and some are afraid, as the Bristol, Tenn. NPR interviewee said, of "minorities getting more benefits than they deserve." The unspoken racism implicit in many of the arguments against the public option must be addressed squarely, especially under the auspices of our first black president.

The most obstructionist sound, of course, is the unified chorus of insurance companies and drug manufacturers. The way we know that our inefficient, horribly broken and, for some, deadly system works for them is that they want no change at all. For them, increasing their bottom line this year trumps the health and lives of Mainers and other Americans. Even access to health insurance does not equate with health or even health care as an amazing article in the current Atlantic Monthly points out in painful detail.

For some, the debate itself has become obstructionist. When confronted with tea baggers bent on curtailing any education at town hall meetings or zealous health care advocates like myself running mini-seminars in the grocery store, at parties and in the local diner, too many people set their eyes toward the middle distance and sigh.

Senator Snowe, your independence is legendary. Please use it to find a way through this morass and ensure that no American's health is at risk because his or her family has inadequate access to care.

Chekov on Doctors

The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too.

(Anton Chekhov)

I don't mean you Drs. Webb and Love, of course. Your practice is unique and beautiful in its simplicity and personal nature. Can anyone tell I have to go to the doctor's today?