Health care reform

Obama pledged to take on America's health care problem while still on the 2008 campaign trail, but even at that early stage those that remembered Clinton's quixotic quest shuddered at the thought of the oncoming ugliness. Health care reform is a deeply divisive political issue in America. We lag behind most of the other developed nations in terms of providing affordable, accessible care for our citizens. Costs have been sky rocketing for the last several decades while health insurance employment benefits have been diminishing steadily. The majority of personal bankruptcies in American are now related to the financial burden of health care, a symptom of insurance reneging on the coverage they had pledged to provide. For those of us who don't vacation in the Hamptons, good health is quickly becoming an unaffordable commodity.

Despite the seemingly blatant nature of the problem, the issue remains a contentious one. Fears of big government interference are being stoked by right wing media and the generous pockets of insurance lobbyists. Now that their bottom line is on the line, the pharmaceutical corporations and insurance giants are shelling out millions to preserve their lucrative status quo. In the last few months the already heated debated became particularly outlandish as coherence and logic lost ground to anger and scandalous propaganda. Reform's opponents are pulling out all the fear mongering stops with tales of death panels, gestapo grandma killers, and town hall temper tantrums. Ignorance and misinformation have always been enemies to the democratic process, but this health care reform debacle has seen them mount a full fledged assault on reasoning. At one town hall referendum, a senior citizen opposed to reform yelled, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare," at Rep. Robert Inglis (R-SC). Medicare is, and always has been, a government program.

While I was ready for the forces of ignorance and right wing ideology (and their human incarnation Sarah Palin) to actively campaign against reform, what has surprised me the most has been the enfeebled opposition. Obama and his congressional allies continue to use logic and reason in a debate that long ago devolved into a game of tug o' war over America's heart strings. The fictitious death panels invoked by Glen Beck and his Fox friends bear more resemblance to the plot of Logan's Run than they do any element of the health care bill before Congress. If anyone in this debate was going to tell tales of heartless bureaucrats calculating the worth of a human life, it should be the health care reformists. A little biased investigative reporting, like the kind done in Michael Moore's documentary Sicko, unearths thousands of grim, heart wrenching stories about unfortunate Americans being denied coverage by the insurance companies they had mistakenly believed they could rely on.

Though my own tale pales in comparison to the true horror stories of health care, as a young college student about to lose his parent provided coverage, mine is probably more relatable to those reading this column. I moved to Austin in the summer of 2008 and soon began to experience serious swelling in my left knee. Unlike many Americans in their early twenties, I was lucky enough to still receive health insurance from my father's employer. After a series of x-rays and MRIs I was diagnosed with pigmented villonodular synovitis, one of those weird random conditions that people get for no apparent reason. The doctor said he could fix the problem by digging around inside my knee with a mini-belt sander and some tiny cameras, a procedure known as arthroscopic surgery. I was insured and eager to get back on my feet so we set a surgery date while my doctor's secretary called my insurance company to straighten out the paperwork. My insurance company, based out of Massachusetts where my parents live, were still wringing their hands over final approval when the surgery date arrived, but I was assured that was just a formality and went through with the procedure.

When angry town hall attendees scream about the threat of having some bureaucrat get between them and their doctor, I'm amazed that they don't realize that the insurance comanies' thoughtless, pencil pushers already barring that path. About a week after my surgery, while I was still propped up in bed recovering, I got a call that my insurance had denied my request and I owed 10,000 dollars for my surgery. The insurance company said that I was out of network, aka I saw a doctor in Texas not Massachusetts, and so they weren't covering me. It was a classic Catch 22. I received insurance because I was a student in Texas, but I could only cash in on that coverage if I was in Massachusetts, which meant dropping out of school. Which meant losing coverage.

It's frustrating, but a drop in the bucket compared to the life threatening, Kafka-esque nightmares insurance companies have subjected millions to as they rescind coverage for clerical errors and play phone tag while tumors grow. The debate rages on in Washington, but it is out here in Texas where the effects of this bill are going to be felt the most. We're the most uninsured state in America, almost a quarter of all Texans have no health coverage, and as students emerging into an economy ravaged by unemployment, we're the ones who need to make our voices heard. The health care industry is an economic powerhouse in the Lone Star state, but it's we, the people, who need to demand that health be added to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," as one of the inalienable rights that every American should enjoy.

Editor's Note: The headline was misprinted in the print issue and has been changed to "Health care reform."