Mr. DeFazio, GroveAtopia's representative to Congress, was here the other day to talk to us about health care reform. The plan was for him to meet with us in the community center and help us all talk about the current proposal to offer a so-called "public option" to people who do not have health insurance and to those for whom the public option is a better deal than the private option they may have. It was called a Town Hall meeting.
Mr. DeFazio has held hundreds of town hall meetings during the years that he has been our representative, but this one was different.
Lately the country has been attempting to find its way with regard to changing health care insurance - or as my husband calls it, medical care insurance. He feels the distinction is important.
And face it, everyone thinks there's something important about this effort. Some think the important thing is not to undertake it at all. Others think we must undertake a more aggressive effort. And there is every opinion in between. We've heard them all.
Or have we?
When Mr. DeFazio was here, people wondered if there would be shouting, yelling and rudeness that would keep others from expressing their views and asking their questions. We have heard about this happening in other places. Nearly 400 GroveAtopians showed up to find out.
In fact so many showed up that the whole meeting had to be moved outside at the last minute. So there was our congressman, wearing the hat loaned to him by GroveAtopia's Community Services Director, standing outside in the bright morning sun literally surrounded by his constituents, many of whom were eagerly raising their hand in hopes of being able to ask their questions.
I saw the whole event on raw video footage taken from behind where Mr. DeFazio was standing and as the camera panned across the crowd, every time the woman in the picture I posted, who was wearing a bright red shirt, had her hand up, but she was never called on. We would never know what she was going to ask.
Or would we?
This being GroveAtopia, were rather than 6 degrees of separation between everyone, there is about a half a degree, I got a chance to find out what she was going to ask, because I saw her today at my favorite little natural foods market. She only works there one or two days a week, but today happened to be one of them so she was there when I went in to pick up some fruit, bread and salsa.
"He never called on you," I said to her.
"Yeah and I had a really great suggestion," she said.
Of course I had to ask her what it was and here it is.
What if we started putting everyone on Medicare, adding them year by year going backwards for the next 40 years until everyone from age 25 and up would be covered? So next year everyone who is 64 would be eligible for Medicare, the following year everyone 63 and so on. In 40 years everyone over 25 would be on Medicare.
This slow pace would allow the Medicare system to adjust to new members, and to forecast how many to expect. It would also allow the private insurance companies to adjust to the new, but slowly and predictably evolving health care market. I guess I would go one step further and make this the "public option." It would be just one of the choices.
Now whether you think this is a good idea or not, you have to admit it is novel, without being whack-o or totally unfeasible. I certainly haven't heard anything remotely resembling this idea being talked about, and unless you have talked to Katie lately, it's highly likely that you haven't either.
If only Mr. DeFazio had called on her. Then we all could have heard her good idea. But that was not to be.
Well at least you get to hear about it here.
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