From the Trenches...

Imagine that the experts and pundits arguing about affirmative action include everyone except African-Americans. Or that every important voice on immigration was born here in the U.S., to citizen parents. Strange, right? Yet this is what the debate over health care reform looks like: lots of people talking about the problem, but hardly any of them seeing it from the inside.

People with chronic illness are about a quarter of the population, yet account for up to three-quarters of health care spending. For them, health insurance isn't about hedging against the unknown; it's about their day-to-day needs, their very survival and function as members of society. They know better than anybody how broken our system is, yet they barely have a voice. Sure, sometimes a few sick people get to tell their (always heartbreaking) stories in public, but only as ornaments.

Since 2008, I've been working to give the sick people -- "patients" -- a voice in this debate, to help them say, "This is what is wrong, and this is what I need." I began with my own blog and now I'm honored to join the Change.org team. I have Crohn's disease, and I've had it for more than 15 years; I come to this issue with months of hospital stay behind me, a half-dozen surgeries under my belt, and a minimum of $15,000 in medical bills every year. I'm fortunate enough to have good insurance now -- but not always, and I know dozens of people who are not as lucky as I am. We -- there are tens of millions of us -- are stuck in the trenches of the health care debate, fighting not over political strategy or principles, but for our lives. We need to be heard.

Photo credit: Imperial War Museum, via Wikimedia Commons