This is only my second diary.
Recently I had a very encouraging conversation with my mother about health care reform. First a little bit of background.... my mother has been a Republican all her life, gets her news from Fox, is a Christian conservative, and has absolutely nothing good to say about "liberals". I used to be afraid to argue with her because she was always so sure of herself and not willing to listen.
But this past weekend I had a really good conversation with her about health care reform.
More after the fold...
In a way the groundwork for this conversation was laid a couple of weeks ago, when she came out to visit me for a week. I tried to stay away from any political topics, since we’ve gotten into some rather heated arguments in the past, but sometimes it just couldn't be helped. For instance, we were sitting at the kitchen table each doing our own thing on the computer when I read blueintheface’s diary Progressive activists are being "f^cking stupid"? Hey Rahm, kiss my f^cking uninsured ass and I kind of had an outburst about Rahm Emanuel’s utter folly, which did lead to somewhat of an argument between Mom and me, but because I was so angry, I didn’t back down. Actually I’m glad that happened because although Mom knows I’m a liberal, I had always held back, out of respect, but this time she got to see some of the emotion that drives me. And of course I’m sure it helped that I wasn’t angry at her or even at a Republican, I was angry at a Democrat.
After she left I had been thinking about how the health care issue is something I really want to talk to her about, to see if I can help her understand my point of view. I realized that although I’ve never been able to get her to see my point of view before in any way regarding anything political, this issue is different. For one thing, she’s on Medicare herself, and likes it. For another thing, my sister is unemployed and her husband has a good job but his insurance is too expensive (because he works in construction... it’s extremely costly because of the possibility of accidents), and my sister’s ex-husband just got laid off also, so neither she nor her husband nor my neice or nephew are covered by any health insurance.... and Mom lives with them. So in their household, the only person covered by any insurance at all happens to be covered by a government-run health care plan. My mother may be stubborn, but she isn’t stupid, so she does recognize this fact.
So this past weekend I decided to broach the topic. I asked her, "Did you know that one of the health care plans that has been discussed in the Senate would make it mandatory for everyone to buy insurance if they aren’t covered? And if there is no public option to make it affordable, how would my sister be able to afford to pay for it? I’m really worried about how it’s going to affect her and her family." She questioned me about the public option, but I explained that it would be similar to Medicare (which is what I thought at the time, now I’m not totally sure about that), and I told her about how Medicare has a really efficient overhead rate, only 2.5%, because it’s not for profit, whereas the insurance industry has a 30% overhead rate... some of which goes to CEOs, some to shareholders, and some of course goes into all the advertising and lobbying that they do.
Mom objected to the issue of how expensive it would be. She pointed out that Medicare is projected to run out of money within a few years. I said, "Well, they’d have to fund it. They need to bite the bullet and make it a priority, because it’s just morally wrong for people not to have any health coverage, or for insurance companies to deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions." By the way, when I said this, I had not realized that they are talking about having it be funded by individuals purchasing it. I didn’t really understand the "exchange" idea. I actually would prefer a single payer system. But that’s a different topic.
I also told Mom about how one of the things that is rumored to have been agreed to is to allow insurance companies to only be required to reimburse 65% of health care cost (according to the article in BusinessWeek The Health Insurers Have Already Won, and also, that they made a deal with the drug industry to not negotiate for lower prescription drug costs.
Anyway, Mom then said something I never expected to hear her say. She said, "Well, there is no question that something needs to be done to fix health care. The system is broken the way it is".
She then related a story to me about something that recently happened to her where a health care clinic she went to not only screwed up her diagnosis (they told her she had broken her wrist when in fact she hadn’t), but then they also tried to bill her for the difference between what Medicare paid and what they claim the payment should have been, which is not supposed to be allowed. They still are trying to get the money from her, but she is fighting it. I think the fact that this happened to her, and also my sister’s situation, has probably helped Mom realize that something really does need to be done. She said she thinks the problem is that Congress tried to rush it through too fast, and she thinks they should also consider tort reform (I didn’t even go there with her... you can only accomplish so much in one conversation!)
But I’ve been thinking about this conversation ever since, about how someone as strongly conservative as my Mom is now convinced that there is "no question" that something needs to be done to fix our health care system, and that when I explained why I support the public option, she actually listened and didn’t really have any objection other than wondering how it would be paid for.
This has been really encouraging for me. I think the loudness and just plain craziness of the opposition can sometimes make it seem as though there are more of them then there actually are. And of course, since the corporate news media’s primary mission is entertainment, the controversy is always amplified, so all the wingnuts get way more attention than they deserve. But the polling numbers show that the general public supports health care reform, even people like my Mom, and also, it seems to me that more and more of the Democrats in Congress are starting to see things our way.
So let’s keep up the phone calling, letter writing, etc. and especially let’s keep encouraging each other with any good news we can.