Listen to the front line

In all the arguing over incremental, sensible improvements to our nation's health-care system, the voices of the people most affected by the current health-care crisis have been remarkably absent. Working families, self-employed small-business owners and uneasy workers fearful of losing their jobs have been heard from less and less as the debate has crawled on.

Instead, cable TV stations and op-ed pages are dominated by those who don't have to worry about how to pay for an ambulance bill or a cancer test. Sunday morning talk shows feature almost exclusively those in the very highest echelons of national income. Just this week, the well-employed Rush Limbaugh even has the gall to claim that the health-care system is "working just fine, just dandy."

The point of health reform was never to simply limit the red tape and cut down on the most egregious abuses of the insurance industry. It was to make millions of Americans more healthy and secure.

Without the voices of our most vulnerable communities, though, the provisions that could have helped those communities the most -- a robust public option, expansion of Medicare, an improved children's health insurance program, etc. -- have lost out.

Specific provisions like ending discrimination based on pre-existing conditions are an enormous step toward a more just and more effective health-care system. But without the voices of struggling Americans at the heart of this legislation, it cannot do all that we need it to do.

After a year of a nearly non-stop national health-care debate, we sit on the precipice of significant -- if incremental -- progress. But we must remember this is not the end of the process. It is only the beginning. We will have countless opportunities to expand and improve on this foundation. The voices of those most in need are vital as we move toward implementation of this historic reform.

By Angela Glover Blackwell  |  January 4, 2010; 6:19 PM ET  | Category:  Health Care Reform Save & Share:                 
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