Human Calculations on the Road to Reform

Driving back from a spring break trip on Sunday afternoon, I switched back and forth on my satellite radio between two distinct brands of March madness.

On one channel was live coverage of the health care debate in the U.S. House. On the other, the NCAA basketball tournament.

Click. “We're moving on to the sweet 16.”

Click “We're sliding into socialism.”

If you had “nonsensical hyperbole” in the office pool, all I can say is winner, winner, chicken dinner.

In the House, I heard how health care reform was tantamount to a totalitarian takeover of the good old U.S. of A. There was shouting and gavel pounding. Civility, like my family, was on holiday.

Clearly, the bill's opponents have made a political calculation that heaping overheated vitriol on this legislation over and over again is the clearest path to victory in November.

“Let's beat that other side to a pulp! Let's chase them down. There's going to be a reckoning!” U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, told protesters after the vote.

But as I drove, it was hard not to look around at my own family and make some human calculations.

I could look in my rearview mirror and see our daughter Tess, who is 8, sitting in her booster seat. When she was born, we were blindsided by the diagnosis of a potentially serious heart defect. Thank God, the deformity healed itself, for the most part, over time without frightening surgery.

But I wondered what it would have been like if, during all those nights we sat up, anxiously counting her baby breaths and giving her pricey, potent medications, we also had to worry how we were going to pay for it. What if our insurance had denied coverage?

It's unthinkable. But it happens.

My wife, sitting next to me, is undergoing treatment for breast cancer. As a state employee, she has fantastic health insurance and we're blessed that for all the burdens of her illness, a financial strain isn't one of them.

But what if she lost her job? Who would insure her? How would we ever be able to cover the astounding costs of her treatment?

I know Congressman King believes the free market would whisk us up into its warm embrace, but I'm not so sure. The bill stops insurers from dumping sick people or refusing to cover those with pre-existing conditions.

Requiring everyone to have coverage is the trade off for forcing plans to insure everybody. I don't like mandates, but I'm grudgingly willing to accept this one.

Because for all the bill's flaws, it's now less likely that our worst health care nightmares will become reality.

Comments: (319) 398-8452 or todd.dorman@gazcomm.com