Don't be shy and share your story here. The most recent terrible-yet-all-too-common story that I heard is a friend of a friend who was being laid off from his job and his wife was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. When I tell people here in France, they can't remotely imagine being thrown to the wolves the way it happens in the US. COBRA is better than nothing, but if a family health insurance plan is $1000 or $2000+ per month, how the heck do you afford coverage when you are getting the boot? Facing one of those issues is bad enough but both at the same time? Are you kidding?
The plan has to be something that appeals to the real world and the middle class or else forget about it. If people can't see the benefits they're going to once again fall for the Republican/insurance lobby stories about socialism and lack of choice. I use socialized health care and choose my own doctors and don't wait any more or less than I did in the US. And it's cheaper. And better. This is a great idea by Daschle so do us all a favor and be heard.
By asking anybody and everybody to share their health care experiences, Daschle is confronting one of the major criticisms of 15 years ago: that the effort to craft former President Bill Clinton's plan for universal coverage was too secretive.NOTE FROM JOHN: Let me add something. As I recently discovered that I am apparently no longer middle class, or upper middle class (no stimulus checks for me!) - and, mind you, I rent a studio apartment, don't own a car, and have no other assets other than my retirement and two foster cats in Paris (and a foster dog in Chicago) - I want to say something about this health care plan helping the middle class. It needs to help everyone. Unless you are Bill Gates, you can't afford to have health care insurance that caps you at a lifetime limit of benefits. Unless you're Albert Einstein, you can't even make sense of your health care plan.
"We have to make this as inclusive a process as possible," Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota, said in a speech in Denver, his first since Democratic officials confirmed last month that he had been offered the job as health and human services secretary and that he had accepted.
The effort will expand the circle of people who believe they have a stake in next year's debate, analysts said.
"Last time, we're talking 15 years ago, in part because the process was done behind closed doors, it was hard to see what the impact would be on people," said John Rother, public policy director for the advocacy group AARP. "It was about systems, it was about budgets, it was about insurance companies. It didn't translate to people very easily."
"They are clearly trying to do it differently and help the American public see the case for reform in human terms," he said.
And speaking as someone who just had to turn down medication I need, and take a weaker substitute, because the stuff I need is $350 for one month's supply (after my insurance cut me off for the rest of the year because I'm too expensive), we need health care reform that helps EVERYONE. Not just the unisured, putting them in the same crappy system the rest of us are already in is not a solution, and not just the middle class, so the rest of us can die when we get cancer, or lose our coverage when we move home to take care of ailing moms and dads. We need a national solution taht helps everyone. If it's healthcare for all, then it needs to truly be for all.
