I often joke/mention here when I attend family events I am the only liberal in a room of 40 folks. It is not a lot of fun, cause I don't have the ability to STFU. They say something stupid or inaccurate I should just let it pass, but something is programmed into my DNA that won't allow that to happen.
I expected today, where as a huge family we had our Thanksgiving dinner, it wasn't going to be a lot of fun.
But something strange happened this time around. My brother's wife's best friend was in town from LA. She is a surfer, vegan, hippie chick, that works in corporate America and makes a ton of money. I normally only see her once every year or so.
As fate would have it her parents came over for dinner and drinks as well, dad a hardcore Rush guy. Mom, a nurse with 30 years experience. What ended up happening was both cool and bizarre.
Long story short the lady from LA works for a large telecom company. Her largest account, well only account, is one of the biggest car companies in the world. Her father, a lifetime of experience also at the same telecom company, selling products to companies like IBM and Boeing got laid off more then a year ago.
His wife, which had not worked for a few years had to go back to work when he couldn't find a job. She was and now is again an OR nurse. We started to talk about health care and that is where things got interesting.
Many of the things I thought when I expressed them to her as a health care professional she agreed with me 110%. It was validation that what I read and learn here is in fact true. That our current system focuses on treating sick people, not trying to prevent them from getting sick in the first place. That the lowest income people have the least help, when they need maybe the most. That any other industrialized nation in the world if they had our health care system would have wide scale riots and strikes/work stoppages.
It might have been a few glasses of wine or vodka on the rocks but I guess we started to talk louder and a few folks overheard our conversation and felt the need to tell us we didn't know what we were talking about.
I am not sure I've seen a smack down like that in my life. I knew more about health care then these folks, and this women knew about a thousands times more then I did. She totally undressed them. Beat them down. Belittled them. One fired up women.
I just sat there thinking I should say something, but didn't know what to say cause she seemed to have it covered.
As we left her daughter pulled me aside and asked, "what the heck did you do to get my mom so fired up?" I said, "I am not sure, I think just that I believe every American ought to have access to affordable health care."
I know we got a lot of nurses that speak out here, but I found her ability, her point-of-view to be one we need to hear a lot more of. For lack of a better phrase she is in the "trenches" and she sees what is happening and has ideas on how to improve the situation.
I think a lot of folks left this family event with, at least I hope, a different perspective on this issue.