Health care reform: a personal issue

From time to time the nerd in me wins over. I know the signs: I start bookmarking links to Web sites dealing with cases currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court; I know the names of people heading up congressional committees; or I get giddy over the purchase and arrival of an obscure out-of-print book no one has read for years. The good news is that such a turn in my life makes it less likely I can do something foolish where it counts and with actual people paying attention.

I realized I made this turn when I discussed the lobbying efforts to discredit the "Baucus" bill with a parishioner the other day. I could tell that my interest was a bit beyond the polite boundaries of chit chat. The nerd in me was winning big time.

For instance, I knew the Senate Finance Committee recently put forward a good first step toward reforming health care in the United States. This made the papers and nightly news. Yet, that didn't suffice: I read the blogs, the policy wonks, and even position papers. After this I knew that it was a "good first step," because it was decried by the insurance lobby as well as the American Medical Association. This may not be the most productive management philosophy, but I figure you must be doing something of substance when people get riled. And the Baucus bill riled the lobbyists to action.

And the insurance industry should be riled. If actual health care reform were to really build, then their for-profit industry would quickly become a nonprofit industry. As soon as people start talking about health care as a necessity like education, then an industry will become a public good. Think about the way you look at kids going to school and then apply that thinking to people going to doctors, being healthy, being treated in a preventative fashion. All of sudden an industry will go away. So it's not strange when the lobbyists for the insurance industry balked at Baucus.

The AMA, which had been talking nice about health care reform, grew cold too, because they realized they didn't want to cash out just yet. There was still a good deal of money to be taken. Remember the VCR and the cassette tape? Remember how expensive they were? And in the same way remember how expensive the compact disk was? Now they are all cheap. Computers are heading in the same direction.

But it takes time. You need to wait for the industry to extract all the cash they can. You don't blame them; you don't take it personally; it's only business. And the lobbying efforts of the AMA essentially reacted to the Baucus bill by saying, there is still a lot of money to be had here. This is what a lobbyist is supposed to do. And the AMA is a powerful lobby.

Which brings me to my point: who is your lobbyist? If you are like me and health insurance takes a big amount of money from your income each year, who is looking out for us? Who is our lobbyist? The hospitals have lobbyists, Fort Drum has two; if you are teacher or a doctor or union employee, your profession has a lobbyist. But what about the average person? Do we have someone who is looking out for us? Again, if you are reading this, then the chances are extremely high in this health care debate you are the ball that is being lobbed about by the lobbyists. Unfortunately there isn't anyone looking to catch us so much as charge us.

In the last 30 years, the average American has become apolitical, cynical and pretty much asleep at the wheel in terms of basic issues that affect our lives. We wring our hands and talk about corruption or corporate greed or bureaucracy, but essentially we have more than enough good things in our lives so we need not bother and certainly enough that we need not get our hands dirty with politics.

The CBS news show "60 Minutes" ran a great exposé on the estimated $60 billion that is stolen each year from Medicare. The producers warned their audience this might "get your blood boiling." But they need not worry. There is no worry, because we don't have the initiative, gumption or even political skill anymore to do anything about this. We will just sigh and then go to bed.

Next Tuesday, Nov. 10, the Community Foundation of Northern New York will host a leadership breakfast at First Presbyterian Church regarding the future of health care. We have invited the director of Upstate Medical University, Dr. David Smith, to speak. He is someone who is working to create partnerships and initiatives that will shape the future of health care for us. The hope is that this will be a nonpartisan view of an extremely political issue. Hopefully, we will be given a greater sense of the changes and the issue that are before us.

But what I really hope is that it may serve as moment where we shake off the dreamy ignorance that so often shapes our lives; i.e., we continue to see this as a political issue, not a personal one. Call the church at 782-1750 and make a reservation; the breakfast starts at 7:30 a.m. and runs for an hour. It is free, but you need to call ahead.

Whether you come to the breakfast or not, take the steps necessary to form a real opinion about this. And if you are daring, go further and begin to see health care as a necessity for all, not an industry, and certainly not a privilege.

The writer is pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Watertown.