We should be publicizing these other aspects of health reform..

[vi5]

I absolutely want at the minimum a public option and if possible single payer. And the way the blue dogs are holding the country and the democratic majority hostage is reprehensible. But thanks to the media, they are dictating the debate and they are altering perception from facts to spin.

But these are also things that we should be talking about just as much as the public option, etc.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-insurance-consumer-protections/

I'm someone who due to having a son who was born 3 years ago with serious illnesses and has been through the healthcare ringer with him and enduring (both emotionally and financially) 6 months of his life in hospital stays, 13 operations in 3 years, in home nursing, medical equipment, etc. So I know the numbers involved in this stuff first hand. I see it daily, weekly, monthly....these numbers and codes and procedures and terms an language have become a part of my fiber, my being.

I'm lucky in that my wife and I both have excellent insurance. We also double cover my son, having him under both our insurances. And even with that we have averaged $15K in out of pocket medical expenses each year of the past 3 since he was born. While we're lucky to have had family, savings, well paying jobs, etc. to have that not break us, that is still a large sum of extra expense for most people and would/could put many families over the top both financially and emotionally. But more so than our personal plight is that spending so much time in hospitals and medical facilities made us see all the situations out there. The fact is that our son is getting better and will get better so ours is not a lifetime expense with him. We saw so many families faced with issues that will not go away, that they will have to contend with for the rest of their lives. We saw people not be able to get treatments that we were able to for our son because our insurance covered them and theirs (they did have insurance) did not. We were able to see better doctors even though they were out of network because we knew we could afford the expense involved in having our insurance pay less to see them.

The other piece is that my wife and I both have jobs that allowed us a certain degree of flexibility in terms of access to phones and computers and what have you, that let us make calls to fight things with the insurance company, to work with doctors on billing issues and just generally wade through the red tape that comes with all of this and catch all the sneaky tricks that the insurance companies try. And the other piece is that my wife and I are both fairly well educated and were also able to catch things and argue certain points and were confident enough to stand toe to toe with doctors and nurses and insurance bureaocrats. We saw so many people and parents who whether due to language constraints or lack of confidence or education did not feel like they could challenge what was handed to them by the insurance industry. These reforms, if they pass will help those people. That's not something to be taken lightly. I've seen first hand watching and becoming aquainted with the "underinsured", that their tragedies, their suffering is just as bad as those who are uninsuranced altogether.

So yeah, I don't want our side to give up on the public option or single payer. But I also don't want us to think that the reforms as listed on the link, if they are in fact able to get them through are not huge, massive victories. This is a long road and it won't be fully traveled so quickly. But if we can at least start with some of these reforms then despite what a lot of us (most of the time myself included) think, it will be a success that we should celebrate.