Healthcare Reform

I'm not a political person although i have strong views about healthcare reform. Lately all of the debate about the recent approved healthcare plan has me livid at times. It actually "hurts my heart" at times when i hear the opposition. This has been my experience - many of the people I know who voice opposition are clueless about what actually goes on every day in the real world with health care. They sit in their big houses with their nice jobs and new cars and great health care plans and say "What's the problem?" or, they recognize there is a problem but they say "Why should the government get involved?"
Every day i see people fall between the cracks. This is what I see on a daily basis - working class people whose employers offer no healthcare benefits, working class people who can't afford to purchase healthcare because of the high cost, people with healthcare who still can't receive care because of high copays, people with insurance who have no or ridiculous prescription drug benefits so they don't take life sustaining medications because they can't afford them, people who lose jobs and can't afford cobra,people who are excluded from coverage because of pre=existing conditions, on and on.....
Why should the government get involved? Why not - someone has to FINALLY do something!!! If insurance companies and Big Pharma wanted to self correct and alleviate some of the issues, they would have done so DECADES ago. They have no interest in fixing the problems because that would eat into their HUGE profits.
I though maybe when some of the recent legislation was enacted restricting pharmaceutical companies from some of the questionable marketing practices, we would see more drug samples coming into physicians offices, to dispense to people without coverage. Less pens, cups, stickie notes, and other marketing paraphanelia, and more product to patients. has this happened? No, actually the opposite has occurred. Drug reps bring fewer and fewer samples. We used to be able to give medication samples to people without coverage, now we can only say "IF the drug rep brings it in and IF we have it." I have seen "Patient Assistance programs" offered by drug companies become more restrictive, so that, for example, a family of four with a combined income of 23,000.00 a year is considered to have "too high" of an income to qualify. The industry creates these highly restrictive guidelines that few people can in reality meet and then say they have social conscience because they offer "Patient Assistance Programs".
What hurts the most, i think, is that people JUST DON"T GET IT.

So, then I turn inside and look at ME and say 'What is it about me that I am seeing in this issue?" and "Why does this bug me so much?"

In my past, as a child, the big people in my life, who were supposed to take care of me, JUST DIDN"T GET IT. They were clueless in many ways about the needs of a child. I think I'm over that but it still strikes a chord when I see this in the world.

I've always been an advocate for the downtrodden, those in pain, the misunderstood. Maybe it just hurts me more than the average person to see the social inequalities and injustices. Maybe that's ok. Probably that's a really good thing. It makes me good at what i do. It makes me more compassionate. Rev. Robert Schuller used to say "Turn your scars into stars". We can always bring good from negative, if we CHOOSE to.

Over the past couple days, as I have been pondering all of this, I have decided to look at this differently. I have decided to look at the people who represent to me, the "other side of the fence" in regard to healthcare reform, as my agents for internal change. Their "cluelessness' represents to me an opportunity to self-correct, to be more compassionate, to soldier on in "being the change I wish to see in the world". I can be annoyed with my perception of their lack of understanding, or I can move beyond this and love people, all people more. I'm working at it....wish me luck....(and say a prayer for all of us).