How do you get people in the streets today?

If you get them in the streets how can you get fair media coverage?

In the 60s the draft focused the minds of us boomers regarding the war, the draft was key in getting us organized and in the streets. Draft resisting and marching for racial justice were natural matches. At first, the media marginalized the racial justice and anti war movements. Then middle class kids starting coming home in boxes and middle class kids started disappearing while organizing in the south. Media started to get on board, not a lot, but enough. Politicians started realizing they could get elected by standing for racial justice and against the war in Viet Nam.

It took a generation to forget what happens when we go to the other side of the planet and save a people from themselves. The warmongers got smarter after Viet Nam and sold the country on an "all volunteer" army. No more middle class moms and dads writing angry letters to their congressman because Johnny might get shipped home in a box after he got drafted.
They pulled off a war where there was no real effective outrage.

Today we have a situation in the US where, in three years, more Americans die because they have no health insurance than died in the Viet Nam war, and the American public doesn't even know it. This site: http://www.ninenineohnine.org/pages/Real_People has some great stats regarding unnecessary deaths because of no health insurance.
 
Based on year 2000 data there were 18,000 deaths in the US due to no health insurance. After 6 years of Bush, there were 22,000 deaths in the US due to no insurance [2006 data]. Bush sure has kept us safe. 22,000 minus 18,000 is about the number of people who died on 9/11, and thats just the comparison from one year under Clinton and one year under Bush.
In 3 years more Americans die in this country from lack of insurance than the 57,000 plus who died in Viet Nam from 1956 through 1973. Even if those figures are cut in half the situation is horrible.

So, how do we get people upset enough to do something that will make a difference? Face it, people dying because they have no health insurance doesn't get eyeballs on the commercials the way people dying in war or being beaten up because they wouldn't leave their seat in a lunch counter does. Since TV gets an amazing amount of advertising revenue from entrenched players in the health business, they are not going to be much help, at least initially.

In the 60s we were limited in the way we could get our messages out. We had guitars and mimeographs and passion. Today we have texting, cell phones, email, faxes, Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, blogs, Colbert, the Daily Show, Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, Rachael Maddow, Keith O.
We have young people who wonder what the big deal is for their parents about race, gender inequality and sexual preference. They are way ahead of most of us, in the way we progressive boomers were in the 60s. What today's youth doesn't have is an experience of a government that works. For all its faults, the post WWII government in the US worked much better and cheaper than the private companies that have taken over way too many government functions.
Not having that experience of an effective government makes it even easier to just embrace resignation. "Why bother? It won't make a difference anyway."

So we have a travesty of a health access problem in America, more tools for information dissemination that ever in human history, more media access than in decades, a large percentage of young adults with very progressive attitudes and a resigned population who ironically would rather watch America's Biggest Loser than write their congressperson.

Ironically we even have 2 health delivery systems that could be great models for universal health coverage.  It amazes me that most people don't know we already have socially accepted single payer [Medicare] and socialized [the VA] medical care here today.
I would love to see some uberconservative try to get re-elected on a platform of getting rid of the VA health system and medicare.

Youth made the difference 40 years ago, youth can make the difference today.

So what is missing that would make a difference?

I would assert that relevance is missing for people in their 20s and 30s and even 40s. So how can you make health access relevant to them? When you are 50 and older, relevance is usually a given.

Maybe it will become relevant to younger America when a friend or parent dies because we don't have universal health care in this country. Then again, they might get really involved when they realize that their parents are spending the kids' inheritances on medical expenses.

That one could be a winner. "Honey, We Shrunk Your Inheritance". That might get them in the streets. You can get just about anyone's attention if you take their money away from them.
The system isn't just stealing young people's inheritance, it is stealing America's inheritance.

My wife and I are 58 and 60 years old and self employed. We pay $550 a month for $10,000 deductible PPO coverage, last year it was $454 a month. Both of us have pre-existing conditions that keep us from changing insurance. Even so we have paid in way more than we have taken out.  If I had the choice of paying $3000 more a year in taxes to have universal coverage with no exclusions or pay $6600 a year for the coverage we have, what do you think I would do? If we paid $6600 a year in taxes with little or no deductible, we would still be better off than we are now. I have to believe that the amount we pay into health insurance now as a nation would absolutely cover the whole country's health costs with a system like Medicare that delivers care for a fraction of the overhead of private insurance. The people who work in the front lines for the insurance companies could become civil servants. We could probably save enough for the whole shebang by not hiring upper managment after the switch.

It looks to me like we have almost everything in place to have universal health coverage. We just have to convince congress that not only is it their best interest to vote for universal health coverage, but they can get re-elected if they do. That convincing comes from enough of us letting them know that we want it and we'll toss them out if they don't listen to us.

I know that there is a 60 second Youtube video waiting to be made that could go viral and give the conversation for universal coverage unstoppable momentum. There is a bumper sticker so funny and so compelling that everyone will want one. There is a song that will make the most conservative old fart in America want to move to Canada so they can have universal health care there.

So get cracking, there is work to do.


[as a side note, this started as a post in another blog but started getting so big I thought i would write my very first blog of my own. As it is, it got out of hand. Thanks for getting far enough to read this. I am open to any suggestions or outright fawning adulation that might be out there. Thanks]