Guaranteed Healthcare

Whatever happened to “Moving On?”

Perhaps it is just my submersion in the ongoing war to guarantee healthcare for every man, woman, and child in this country, but it seems to me like things have really warmed up over the past year, and that everyone is feeling the heat. Since the release of SiCKO approximately a year ago, everyone has been asking themselves the same questions: Am I covered? What does my policy include? Am I one illness, one surgery, one prescription, or one ER visit away from being branded “uninsurable?”

The news media has been focusing on the dark underbelly of the insurance industry (as if there’s a lighter side to the industry). Everyday there are reports of skyrocketing CEO salaries and parallel policy costs, the increasing numbers of uninsured and underinsured, and patients who have been denied care. The downturn in the economy has meant that an entire nation of working- and middle-class people are walking on eggshells, worried that they are a pink slip away from losing health benefits for them and their families. And of course, we welcome home every day women and men who have been irrevocably damaged by war in the Middle East. Some scars are visible, most are not, and few (if any) of them are receiving the full network of health support they require and deserve.

Clearly, this coverage and outrage are coming to a head. They say things need to get worse before they get better, and it doesn’t get much worse than this. With a major political shift in this country a mere six months away, the caregivers and patients of this country are poised to effect profound healthcare reform.

Which is why it’s so disappointing that a group of enormously influential organizations, including MoveOn.Org, Planned Parenthood, and the National Women’s Law Center, are steering a new organization that follows up a mighty swagger with a whimpering compromise: not to chuck out the insurance industry altogether, but to strictly monitor it. Right.