Health Care and Pre-Existing Conditions

I have shied away from the ongoings of the public health care debate. I deemed them too heated, too beliggerent to even give it a second thought – let it be and this too shall pass. An article on Newsweek.com that I happened to read a few moments ago, reminded me of the importance of vigilance when it comes to politics, most especially when it comes to health care. The article was about the need for the President to reframe his Health-Care debate, Obama needs to reframe health-care debate, and I quote:

“As the health-care debate rages, it’s the Party of Sort-of-Maybe-Yes versus the Party of Hell No! The Yessers are more lackadaisical because they’ve forgotten the stakes—they’ve forgotten that this is the most important civil-rights bill in a generation, though it is rarely framed that way.

The main reason that the bill isn’t sold as civil rights is that most Americans don’t believe there’s a “right” to health care. They see their rights as inalienable, and thus free, which health care isn’t. Serious illness is an abstraction (thankfully) for younger Americans. It’s something that happens to someone else, and if that someone else is older than 65, we know that Medicare will take care of it. Polls show that the 87 percent of Americans who have health insurance aren’t much interested in giving any new rights and entitlements to “them”—the uninsured.

But how about if you or someone you know loses a job and the them becomes “us”? The recession, which is thought to be harming the cause of reform, could be aiding it if the story were told with the proper sense of drama and fright. Since all versions of the pending bill ban discrimination by insurance companies against people with preexisting conditions, that provision isn’t controversial. Which means it gets little attention. Which means that the deep moral wrong that passage of this bill would remedy is somehow missing from the debate.“

“Sec. 111. Prohibiting Pre-Existing Condition Exclusions

A qualified health benefits plan may not impose any pre-existing condition exclusion (as defined in section 2701 (b) (1) (A) of the Public Health Service Act) or otherwise impose any limit or condition on the coverage under the plan with respect an individual or dependent based on any health status-related factors (as defined in section 2791 (d) (9) of the Public Health Service Act) in relation to the individual or dependent. ” – H.R. 200 (Health Care Bill as proposed by the Government on July 14, 2009).

 

Willful Blindness and pennies on the dollar

“North and South” chronicles the journey of the heroine, Margaret Hale, as she moves from the gentile South to the smog-filled Industrial North. There, she encounters a disparity she has not yet been accustomed to: that of the working class poor and the affluent merchants. The divide between the two extremes have not yet been bridged by a rising middle-class.

As the movie progressess, the modern phenomena of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is poignantly portrayed through the unsuccessful strikes leading to the demise of not only the working class proponents of the strike but also a manufacturer as others, mainly the merchants, maximized their income through speculation. Despite the abject poverty in the heart of the city, the affluent walk on by without a flinch. The level of acceptance shown by the elite of the wretched conditions afflicting the great majority of the citizens in Milton is deeply unsettling.

As I watch the movie, for probably the fourth time, I am struck by the thought that in our times, with all its advances and economic superiority, there still exists the working-class poor and the homeless. In our Washington DC suburbs area, considered one of the most affluent in the nation, we are still confronted by this disparity, though probably not as stark. Or perhaps its invisibility is not because of location or frequency of encounter but because of our own shielding of such sights, our own censureship of the harsh realities around us. Or have we become accustomed and when we go out we only see a blended, blurred image of our surroundings?