Should Get Interesting Now - Get the Facts People

So... late last night after our local paper went to bed the US House voted to pass their version of health care reform. No one should celebrate just yet.

The Senate has not yet brought its bill(s) to the floor yet - for some reason I thought they had but that must have been all the hype over the Baucus bill. In any case, the Senate needs to pass something before any reconciliation of the bills can happen. And reconciliation is usually a LONG process. Things can change a lot during this process, compromise can rewrite all sorts of things.

So the battle is far from over and both sides are going to gear up and flood the airwaves with all sorts of spin and insanity. There will be polls, and commentary and all sorts of silliness on the various talk shows.

The funny thing is that prior to this vote the majority of the polls were reported as indicating that the public did in fact want a public option and yet the opponents of health care reform kept (and still keep) saying that "the American people" do not want such a thing.

Now I know from statistics classes, marketing classes and a dash of sociology that you can skew a poll to produce the results you want simply by targeting and wording the questions in certain ways. You aren't supposed to do that of course - researcher bias is a bad thing. However it is hard to imagine that every pollster did exactly the same thing. I admit I haven't read every question in every poll, but it seems to me that the version of public option being presently proposed is something a great number of people do actually want. Also, from everything I've read on the fact-checking sites it is also NOT a "take-over" of health care by the government and our constitution is not in jeopardy. No one is bending or breaking the US Constitution by proposing health care reform. The Patriot Act? The wire-tapping that provides, that one is on shaky ground regarding the Constitution.

If it was so awful would AARP, the American Cancer Society (ACS CAN), the American Medical Association and various other organizations be in favor of a public option? Friends in other parts of the world who actually have what is REAL "socialized" medicine can not understand what the hell our problem is, they are satisfied with their medical care.

We have excellent medical schools and wonderful doctors here, that is true but we do not have the best care - it costs too damned much to make that claim, far too many people do not have access to any sort of basic care, and our infant mortality rate is too high for an industrialized nation.

We do need tort reform. We need reform that will impact the insurance companies so that women aren't charged more for the same coverage just because they are women. We need the portability aspect in regards to pre-existing conditions of HIPAA to be enforced. We need insurance not to be a racket offering marginal protection and charging us an arm and a leg for it. If we are out of work we need to be able to still get our medications, see our doctors and not lose the house as a result. We shouldn't be punished with loss of coverage because we had the NERVE to contract and survive cancer.

No matter what you believe, or which bill you support: GET THE FACTS. Go to FactCheck.org and other non-partisan sources and do the research. Figure out what it is the pundits and various legislators are saying and what the bills being proposed mean to you before you jump to conclusions. BE INFORMED. Then, once you are contact your representatives and let them know what you want.

The battle isn't over, things are going to get very interesting from this point on.