Musings During the Delay

The plan is to print out the health care bill today. I found it, but then heard from a friend that he thought there were separate House and Senate health care bills which would have definitely complicated things. The bill's name is H.R. 3200; there is a direct link that will take you to its text located at the right side of this website. I also wanted to draw your attention to a new White House website, Health Care Reform Reality Check. This website was launched, obviously, to answer questions and dispel rumors that people may have heard about the health care reform. Not everyone has the spare time to read the health care bill like I do, but hopefully, they'll have three seconds to look up this website and set things straight.

I'm afraid this is a very naive outlook on things, especially with the recent developments at Town Hall meetings around the country. People are angry; whether or not they've been egged on by interest groups to be that angry remains to be seen. Are they really angry about the health care bill? They are angry about what they think the health care bill is about. They've been told mistruths, by whatever sources, in hopes that there will be a massive public outcry and H.R. 3200 will be stopped. Cenk Uygur wrote on the Huffington Post that people aren't angry about health care; they're angry that their world is changing and it's moving on without them. There has been an outcry for certain; people screaming at their representatives and senators and getting into physical altercations at town hall meetings. What this is preventing is the serious discourse between the people who really need their questions answered and their representatives. People who truly need to learn about the bill only see these angry, angry people and automatically think that health care reform is bad. They don't know what's really in the bill and they believe what they see on television or what they read on the internet. I even saw a website that "translates" the health care bill into tiny, three word summaries of entire pages and of course, the summaries run along the lines of "the government is rationing health care!!"

What I want to assure you is that my blog will be an intelligent, unemotional summary of H.R. 3200. I believe the facts stand on their own and I believe the government would not deceive us. This isn't about politics. This is about people's lives.

Rhyme and Reason

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past eight months, you know that health care reform has been at the forefront of the Obama administration's agenda. It is a heavily contested issue, with vehement proponents and critics. 

I am one of the supporters of health care reform. I am a college-educated twenty-something from Michigan; I have a bachelor's degree in History and Psychology, and a bachelor's degree in Secondary Education. Since I grew up about 40 minutes from the U.S.-Canadian border, I knew people who frequently made trips to Windsor for gambling at the casinos Detroit didn't have. I found out at a later age that they were going to Canada to get their prescriptions filled at a cheaper price, or find over-the-counter drugs in Windsor pharmacies that you would need a prescription for in Detroit. I didn't understand then why it made a difference whether they got their prescriptions in Windsor or Detroit because the drugs were the same. I thought it had to do with exchange rates.

I hold a full time job as a teaching assistant at a public school in suburban Oklahoma City, and I make less than ten dollars an hour doing it. Because I have astronomical student loan payments that take up more than a quarter of my salary, I cannot afford health insurance. My employer does offer a stipend to go towards the purchase of health care; incidentally, it's almost exactly the amount of one of my loan payments. I am not a charity case, but I live in constant fear of what might happen to me if something happens that requires medical treatment. So far, I've been able to get along with going to the free clinic in the city I live in. However, that's not always going to be able to take care of things.

But I digress. This blog is not to debate the health care issue. I will leave it to those people who get paid to debate on television and other forums. It's not to say that I'm not comfortable hosting debate on my blog; I certainly welcome educated, well thought out debate posts. But you know what they say: those who can't, teach, and that's exactly what I'm going to do. 

A friend of mine who opposes health care reform told me, "Obama admits that he hasn't read the whole bill, it's over a thousand pages long." It made me think, "How many people who talk about the health care bill, from either side, have actually read the damn thing?" The purpose of this blog is to bring the health care bill to the masses. I'm going to go through every page of the health care bill and put it into words that the everyday American will understand. I will be the first to admit that I don't know everything there is to know about the actual health care bill. I'm having enough of a hard time finding the silly thing online so I can print it out. But what I can promise is that I will do my best to present the health care bill in the best way possible, and neutralize my own political tendencies. I'm not going to reflect on its contents, I'm just going to give out the information so that all who see this may make an educated decision about health care reform. 

It is our responsibility, as citizens in a democracy, to become informed about issues so that we may make the best decisions when it comes to exercise our right to vote. It is also our responsibility to contact our representatives when we don't like what is going on in our country. However, how can our reps and senators accurately represent us and our best interests when we blindly accept what we see on the internet and hear on the television as facts, and tell them to vote based on that? I know not everyone has the reading level to absorb what's written in the health care bill, but that's what I'm here to do.

For reference, folks, I will be using several sources when it comes to researching health care reform. I am relying on the White House website, its associated websites, and the Library of Congress. I will also rely, to a small extent, on Wikipedia which breaks my own rule of never using Wikipedia as a reliable source for anything. In this instance, it will act as a springboard for ideas or a compass to direct me to other research sources. I'll try to avoid posting statistics because 30% of statistics are made up.

Please stay tuned and be patient while I find the health care bill and print it up.

Welcome and Salutations

Welcome, friends, for visiting my humble blog. It is currently under construction, and I also need to actually print out the health care bill for me to read... it is, after all one thousand pages long. But please visit back and hopefully, I'll get this show on the road as soon as I can.