So now that health care/insurance reform is signed, I'm trying to determine, like many, many Americans, what it means. There has been invective, insult and intimidation among some who think they know what it means but frankly I am appalled by the nastiness, the rage, the guns (!) nor can I see a clear correlation between the protest signs and the policy as I understand it.
The policymakers themselves at least the Republicans have made speeches and/or spectacle decrying the end of America with howls of outrage, wolfish grins and dire predictions about how Democrats will be sorry in November. (The Democrats may in fact be sorry in November which is what makes the courage of their vote all the more remarkable.)
On the face of it, there are a lot of wolves howling, drowning out the quiet leadership of those who shepherded this bill (Pelosi, Capps, Slaughter, Schakowsky -- wow! all women -- Waxman, Reid, Durbin, and others). The rest of us are lambs, silent and watchful, hoping that our lives will not end any time soon because of what the wolves are doing.
So here's one lamb's perspective:
A) I'm a baby boomer with Medicare and private insurance in California (where insurance company Anthem/Blue Cross raised rates 40% recently) so I need preventive care (one of the benefits in the bill), lower costs (take that Anthem/Blue Cross!), some insurance choices and elimination of the "donut hole," all of which are benefits of the reform package.
Regarding the friendly-sounding donut hole, a friend of mine nearly lost her life to it: she fell into that no-coverage zone and could not afford the out-of-pocket expenses ($800 bi-monthly) that her medication suddenly cost; she signed up for a free experimental drug instead, had a terrible reaction, went into a coma, was discovered by a friend, rushed to emergency and three months later was finally out of ICU. Warning: Donut holes can be lethal.
B) I'm a woman, a mother of two women, a grandmother of a baby woman, so I need what's specific to women in the outcomes of the bill. No longer does my 30-something pregnant daughter have to worry about pregnancy as a precondition which can result in being canceled by her private insurance; my younger, the 25-year-old, can get family planning services, preventive care, reproductive health -- all covered on her dad's and my policy until she's 26, at which time she can't be charged 50% more than a same-aged male by the insurance policy at her workplace.
Because I'm hopeful that these two wonderful people I birthed will never need it, I'm not even mentioning other benefits this bill offers: they can't be denied coverage if they are victims of domestic abuse or are diagnosed with breast cancer or hold "dependent" status on their family insurance and their husbands lose their jobs. (Someone in one of the anti-bill protests compared the passage of this legislation with "gulag socialism," but gulags are oppressive, imprisoning islands; any society which considers domestic violence a precondition qualifies as an insurance gulag in my book.)
C) I'm an ethical being and I'm tired of living in a wealthy society that does not care for the most vulnerable in our midst -- the elderly, the children, the poor and, yes, the women.
What this legislation means is that finally we are insuring health care for (almost) all Americans - the male and female members, the over-65, the grandchildren, the employed, the hope-to-be-employed, those with preventative care regimes like eating right and exercising, those with preconditions, those in the mountains, those at the seashore, those in the middle.
This legislation is good for the lambs. Maybe we should be silent no more.