Mennonite Weekly Review

By the time this article goes to print, health care reform may have already passed. But it is just as likely to be stuck somewhere in Congress.

Tammy Alexander is legislative associate for domestic affairs in the Mennonite Central Committee Washington Office.

For those of us trying to keep this legislative train on the tracks, it has been quite a roller coaster ride — “death panels,” “the Gang of Six,” “rationing” and “reconciliation” (a word that used to mean something quite different in my vocabulary).

At President Obama’s health care summit Feb. 25, there were brief glimpses of what an honest debate about health care reform could have looked like.

The president told of his mother who, in the last days of her battle with cancer, was arguing with insurance company representatives from her hospital bed. Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma offered practical, reasonable ideas for improving the legislation, such as using undercover patients to expose fraud.

But true reconciliation is elusive. With election cycles that never seem to end and media outlets clamoring for the most outrageous sound bite, after the summit stories about process still trumped stories about substance. Politics trumped people.

And this debate should be entirely about people. It should be about the one in six Americans who don’t have health insurance. It should be about those who get kicked off insurance rolls after getting sick, or those who can’t afford to pay high deductibles, or the 60 percent of bankruptcies that are caused by medical bills.

It should be about the young woman who can’t get treatment for a chronic condition, the father who wants to change jobs but can’t for fear of losing the insurance that covers his family, or the small business owner who, after one employee contracted cancer, is afraid he will have to drastically raise rates for everyone or drop coverage entirely.

These are real stories I’ve heard in Anabaptist communities around the country, and they represent millions of others.

This is not a situation that will get better if we close our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears. In 1993, prior to the Clinton administration’s failed attempt at health care reform, there were 38 million uninsured. Today that number is likely over 50 million. The Medicare trust fund is predicted to run out of money in 2019.

In many ways, we’re afraid to tackle the hard work of reforming our health care system. We’re afraid of government getting between us and our doctors, afraid of care being rationed.