Healthcare Reform

I apologize for my recent absenteeism. It is likely to continue for the next couple of weeks because I have a lot of thesising to do! My entire rough draft is due a week from today, a final will be due to my committee about a week after that, and in 4-5 weeks I should be defending. So if you don't hear from me before then, that is why.

I have been wanting to write about my familial struggles regarding health care reform, but I had been concentrating my energy and efforts into writing out letters and compiling documents into a simple statement about my feelings regarding health care. These packets are intended for my family, who over Grandma's birthday dinner at Ye Olde Outback Steakhouse, attacked the prospects of health care reform. Not only that, but this conversation evolved into an asinine detour regarding Obama's nation of birth.

So I will make a mini-statement here about my feelings about health care reform. I am fairly happy with the developments that have been made because they are a step in the right direction. Anyone expecting anything more radical at this juncture needs to wake up and smell the coffee (or the coffin placed on a democratic delegate's front lawn as a protest to their support of the bill). If I have learned anything from the women involved in environmental work I interviewed for my thesis, I have learned that baby steps are a necessity for any change. That being said, I applaud the passing of the health care bill, despite its flaws and despite the little matter that Representative Stupak contributed (in a nutshell, no federal funding for abortion proceedures). I only wish that this bill would have been passed years ago, when I was a college graduate under the age of 26 with no health insurance. I am very happy for those who will be able to now stay on their parents' health insurance plans until the age of 26.

What upsets me most of all about this whole debacle is how worked up, angry and violent the opposition is becoming. And I'm not necessarily referring to all this "isolated incident" talk, but rather to the reaction of my family to this whole thing. I fervently defend my political beliefs, but as a rule, I try not to bring up politics around my family, especially my extended family. Now under the Bush regime, everyone in my family was happy, I maintained my political silence around them, and for the most part, peace abounded in their lives, while I privately battled the demons of the Bush administration. But now that things are not going their way for the first time in 8 years, everyone seems to be involved in the political arena, and everyone in my family seems to have been informed by Glenn Beck. In my defense, they are the ones who have been bringing up the subject of health care reform, and I am the one voice of opposition (reason?) in their lives. Maybe it is something I need to work on, but I simply cannot maintain silence when my grandmother looks at me and tells me she is scared for what this health care reform is going to do to the elderly and this country in general. I had never, ever heard my grandma talk politics or about the government. Wanting to share with her that I don't think she should be scared, and that health care reform can be a great thing for many people including myself, I told her that I was excited for a change in a clearly broken health care system. What followed was a hodgepodge of "Where's the birth certificate?" and "This country was founded on freedom and we are losing that," among other questions and comments. Coming at me from all sides at the family-style seating, I can no longer even distinguish who said what or who attacked whom. I do know that something changed that night involving our family dynamics. I also know that I lost sleep and sanity as a result of the hubbub.

Several hours later, I suffered from another episode of an "opthalmic migraine." I put this in quotations because I am still not 100% certain that is what it is, but basically I get stroke symptoms, my vision goes haywire and my extremities and lips go numb for a short period of time. I get confused and have trouble reading, writing, and remembering. It is a scary thing to go through, and there really isn't much I can do besides ride out the 1-2 hour happening. I don't know what set it off, and it is still not even widely understood in the medical community. But I feel that maybe, just maybe, the stress about this whole health care thing has contributed to my recent episode. Due to health care reform debates, I must seek health care.

So if you see me within the next couple of weeks/months, we can talk about anything. But please lets not talk about health care reform, ok?

Update: Found this interesting...from http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/mlm/healthscatter2.png