Pause

The political climate around health care reform is dark and gloomy. This condition is being fueled by the instantaneous and continuous mass communication of our growing frustration with the give-and-take political process. Anger, for lack of a better term, hangs thick in the air. A reflective pause, however, may yet reveal the silver lining in these clouds.

First, consider what we stand to gain from this Bill: No more pre-existing conditions. Health insurance that is accessible (if not immediately affordable) to freelancers, self-employed, contractors, etc. But what may be the most important thing that will come out of this is a formalized ‘Affordable Access to Health Care Act’. It will institutionalize our access to health care as a fundamental service that should be accessible to (thus affordable for) all citizens. This is why the Right is fighting so hard to bury this Bill by any means necessary. Neither the Right, Left, or Middle will ever be able to put that genie back in the bottle again.

Significant challenges will remain past the actual signing of an Act, however . The systems to facilitate and monitor the implementation of the ‘Act’ are not all in place. There will be mistakes, false starts, and wrong turns in the process. The “Act” will need to be re-visited and modified over time to make it more effective. This is where we, as Americans, are going to have to do something that we are not accustomed to doing in our generation: We need to stay aware, involved, and engaged in the incremental modifications long past the celebrations (if any) of the signing. We CAN NOT wipe our hands of this and leave it for the corporate influenced politicians to implement and maintain unattended. We have to remain ever watchful for proposed amendments to (or proposed legislative action designed to weaken) the ‘Act’ via line items on other seemingly unrelated bills. We have to stay involved by constantly monitoring the progress of implementation of the provisions in the ‘Act’. We must stay actively engaged with the political leadership, locally and nationally, and continuously hold them accountable to fulfilling the provisions of the Act through adequate funding and public and transparent oversight. And we must keep doing these things far beyond the term of this Presidential Administration.

The long term commitment to making health care reform work for America is ultimately left to us, the public, the People. As parents, guardians, and responsible adults, we cannot hand this commitment off to someone else to manage. The silver lining in the cloudy gloom that hangs heavily over the health care reform discourse is that we, the People, will ultimately be the caretakers of the reform process. The diligence of our scrutiny and engagement in this process will determine the quality of the product in the years to come. To borrow a phrase, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

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