A (Healthy) Cry in the Wilderness

It was beginning to be one-sided with all the screaming about health care reform (or lately, health insurance reform). Sometimes the most influential voices in any debate are either the loudest, or the ones who speak last. For sure, there have been some loud, and at times rude and obnoxious, screeches at the so-called Town Hall meetings. Most of those were opposed to what they thought was being proposed as ObamaCare (ironically, Obama has not written one word of the current bills in play).

Now, there is finally a sleeping giant aroused in the name of a non- (or multi-) denominational religious group called Sojourners and Jim Wallis. He writes a calm statement about the misinformation and fear mongering going on now. So much of what is said and written is pure hyperbole - a widely irresponsible and inflated view of the bills as written so far.

Proposed end-of-life counseling, which could put many older folk at ease about how their lives might end, has been twisted into "death panels" by Sarah Palin and others. Now with so much mis-information, even the good parts of such legislation have been removed to take away some of the fuel from the fire. The sad thing is that, as it was written, the voluntary (not mandatory) counseling was to be paid for by whatever health plan that was crafted. Folks near the end of life could have felt comfortable talking with their own doctors and others about advanced directives, the same things we are counseled on each time we are in the hospital.

Dialogue is a good thing and it helps to clear the air and quash rumors and reveal falsehoods. The problem has been that the public discourse has often been monologues - the views of one side screamed over the voices of others. That is not productive, not fair, and certainly not democratic.