I'm so happy that words fail. My family has had a significant burden lifted today with the signing of health care reform. On September 23, 2010 it will no longer be legal to drop our daughter Arden's coverage due to her type I diabetes. That real possibility was a constant source of fear and stress for us and the countless millions of other families that have children with chronic diseases. www.ardensday.com | @ardensday
Just recently a friend of mine remarked, “I’m always stunned at how your politics don’t seem to be in line with your best interests”. I’m not sure he meant this as a compliment but I sure took it as one. He’s correct; I don’t necessarily vote for politicians or take positions on local issues because they benefit me. Most of the time, I’m a greater-good kind of guy.
To properly discuss health care reform I think that you have to be honest about your leanings. In my eyes there are two major factors in the discussion: people and money, and you can’t properly represent one without ignoring the other. With how our system of government is set up, there are too many influences on either side for anyone to do what is 100% right. Know that when a politician says “compromise” they mean, “we found a way to get ours and still give you something”. It’s reported that during the health care reform debate there were eight lobbyists for every politician in D.C. and they all were fighting against reform. The most disturbing and telling of those I know of is Dunkin’ Donuts. That’s right, Dunkin’ Donuts was in D.C. fighting against Americans receiving better health care. Citizens get what we get because our system allows those influences, that’s just how it is. Is it wrong? Yes. Should HCR suffer because of it? No. This is about health care not political reform; we need to deal with reality and move on.
HCR is expensive; I could easily make an argument here today against it and back up my argument with numbers that would make us all sick. However, making that argument comes at a price, a price that in my judgment is too steep. If you make the case against HCR you are making the case that people should have to live in pain and in many cases die prematurely. I for one am not comfortable passing judgment on who lives and who dies. Further, we should not abide the argument from those that are lucky enough to afford good care that says, “if you want good HC, pay for it”. Such arguments malign those that through circumstance or station can’t afford the same. They are deplorable and make the unreasonable link between hard work and success. Many Americans work as hard as anyone could ask and still don’t have the income to afford quality care. Access to good health care should never be restricted by status. Health care is the forefront of what a caring country should provide to its citizens. It’s absurd that for the price of your taxes you get police, fire, military protection, a library, roads and on and on but not the ability to comfortably stay alive. If you can afford good care you should act humbly, not indignant and callus: your fellow citizens don’t deserve such treatment.
Parents, you know when a person that doesn’t have children tries to give you advice on parenting and they seem so sure of their advice? You know how you nod at them and then walk away thinking, “you’ll see one day, it’s not nearly that easy”. I see commenting on health reform as being similar. There are basically two types of people talking loudest about reform: the healthy and the sick. There are many subsets of the two: healthy that have money, that don’t, the sick that have insurance and those who are without and countless others. That fact of the matter is a healthy person is just a person that hasn’t gotten sick yet. Those of you that have always been healthy and would begrudge reform would do well to remember that your time is coming. There will be a day in each and every one of our lives when we will need a doctor. When that time comes you will do anything to see that doctor, you will do anything to stay alive. The healthy that are against reform are tantamount to a childless person giving parenting advice, they don’t know of what they speak.
Most people that are lucky enough to be healthy feel as though nothing is wrong with how our health care system works. They go to a doctor once in a while, pay a co-pay and never think about it again. The sick know the truth because they live it. The aspect of this argument that often eludes the healthy is this: we are all going to die from the same thing, our bodies will eventually fail us. It is only a matter of when. Most of us live with the delusion that it won’t be us that goes early and I understand why some choose that tact, it’s difficult to face your mortality. Every person, will at some point need health care, some more frequently, some very urgently and some not until the end but since we can’t pre-determine which need we will have, we are all just waiting for our time to come. None of us are in less need of care; we are all just in a different place in the line that leads to the day that we will.
My daughter Arden was diagnosed with type I diabetes just after her second birthday. I don’t have enough time or enough words to describe how awful it is to live with type I diabetes. I could fill the internet with examples of how it ruins our lives day to day and how it’s killing her much faster then she deserves. I can tell you that there are medical devices, doctors and medicine that can slow down the destruction that type I is wreaking on her body and that all of those things cost money. Money that I am lucky enough to have. Arden’s life teaches me much, but above all it has taught me this: No one can imagine another person’s illness, no matter how much information you collect about their disease or how much time you study them, you’ll never understand the abject awfulness of being chronically ill. You just can’t and attempting to do so is beyond contempt.
How could anyone argue that my daughter if born into another circumstance, would deserve to live in unnecessary fear and pain, to die earlier then our current medical technology allows, or to be subjected to even one more ounce of heartache ? I think that it takes an unhealthy disconnect from mankind for a person to make that case.
I’m not a political scientist or a financial genius by any stretch of the imagination but I know this: If HCR reform ultimately fails as so many are apt to predict, then at least we’ll go down doing the right thing. At some point you have to ask yourself, “what is more important to me, money or people?”. We must draw a line in the sand, dig in and let come what will come. Doing the right thing has been this countries only criteria on so many day ones of so many struggles. Health care reform is no different, no scarier and no less risky.
If you'd like to learn more about Arden and her life with type I diabetes you can go to her site or following her on Twitter.
May today's historic legislation help your family even a tenth as much as it will help mine,
Scott Benner