Do you care about legislation funding SCHIP, that pet project of failure designed to insure America's "children?" The thing is that we as consumers have to step up our game. Health Insurance Keep it Simple Today: Get comfortable with the idea that the health insurance/health services crisis affects you every day of the year. Read through stakeholder actions and act on your own behalf.
Consumers have to engage in the health services debate on a more complex level. When was the last time you looked at an entertainment website? How about the AHIP website? AHIP is the largest lobbyist on behalf of health insurance companies. They support insurance coverage for all because that ensures their livelihoods. It is the quality of that insurance (worsening for decades) and the resistance to legislative control over their conduct (as to legislative mandates) that bugs them.
AHIP supports SCHIP (after all, it's government dollars being thrown at insurance for the young...the healthiest citizens.) Government loves these kinds of programs too because they take the face of impoverished children and say see, we've given them access to health services. The middle class is not nearly as persuasive. But it is a big mistake to continue the old fashioned ideas that legislation that helps the poor is a "solution" to a societal problem and it is equally old fashioned to believe that legislation that supports the rich is a "solution" to a societal problem.
Obama promised not to engage in this old fashioned approach but through the dazzling promise of using "technology" in some long-term process that rewards doctors for using "technology" that encourages consumers to sacrifice their privacy for convenience and that promises that health insurers will save money (note never passing those savings onto consumers) by having this information, Obama is also promising to expand the only sectors of our economy that have flourished under the rich to poor trickle down phony promises of George Bush, government and health services. Obama is flipping the formula to the poor to rich, we're only as good as our poorest citizen model which has also been a failure time and time again.
So why are all these brains resistant to addressing the key problems afflicting the middle class? Why all the rhetoric of recognizing the importance of the middle class and then decade upon decade of action that squeezes them dry for the poor or rich?
First because we are the financial backbone of the US. Fixing a problem for more people is always harder than some fabulous and flashy project helping a few. Think about doctors taking charity cases from abroad and performing complicated surgeries for free as our own citizens languish and die for lack of ability to pay fees.
Second because the middle class typically conceives of itself as "not having time" to become involved in anything because of the "work" excuse...those eight hours a day prevent any action. Really, it's complacency...things are fine for me and it is not until a job loss or an illness that middle classmen suddenly say: Oh no, there's a problem. This excuse we can do something about BEFORE we become part of some compromised population. It's long, hard and often seems to have few results. I've written to my Congressman only to receive a form letter response that he supports technology legislation...well of course he does, that wasn't the point of writing, the point of writing was to be at least one member of the group he supposedly advocates for expressing an opinion.
This brings us to the third problem: Consistent action. Today things seem fine, so maybe I'll put my health insurance concerns on the back burner. But the other stakeholders are not sitting back and waiting, they're acting with things like new funding for SCHIP, more dollars from government that will perpetuate more governmental employees (who don't have the same health insurance tough choices that the rest of us have), more "insured" poor which does not account for the CRISIS we face and more rich advocating as doctors for legislation that benefits them (such as recent Medicare raises including 2% raises if they jump on the technology bandwagon as a form of government kickback for you support my pet project and I'll pay you).
Today make a choice to remain involved in some way: Comment, organize, choose one aspect of the health services industry and stick with it.
