Sicko

I promise not to get on a soapbox or another political jag two days in a row, but rather to say everyone should watch Obama's speech before Congress tonight about health care. This is an issue WAY to long in the making not to take seriously and to think about how you want your elected representatives to vote.

I find it fascinating (in that civics teacher way) that when Social Security was proposed during the Great Depression and Medicare/Medicaid as part of LBJ's Great Society initiatives there was overwhelming support and a desire for government to play a role to provide essential services to the most needy citizens.

How is this different? What does it take to convince people that we do need some type of reform when 50 million Americans, many of them children, have little to no medical coverage. I cannot imagine my life without the saving graces of medical care. It was loss of our medical insurance more than anything else that was hardest to swallow with this recent job loss. And I can firsthand account that my family would have likely declared bankruptcy had my dad not had insurance with a decade long fight with long term illness. Insurance should not be a luxury for who have jobs or can afford it, it's a necessity and we all pay the price to cover the uninsured.

I can't think of a better story that represents that in a country of so much wealth, so many do without. Check out a Times story about Remote Area Medical's recent LA stop in which thousand were served. This is thinking BIG and not letting partisan politics mire down much needed change in the way we think about health care.