Neighbors Look Out for Each Other -- Don't They?

Nothing brings a community together and confirms people’s basic decency like a tragedy that happens to a family you know.  A friend, a family member, a neighbor, someone from your school, someone from your church – where there’s a personal connection, the community rallies around to offer what help we can.  We know their faces.

For years, though, we’ve been comfortable as a nation saying that the 40 to 50 million uninsured and 30 million underinsured aren’t our problem.  Health care is a privilege or a responsibility, we’re told, not a right.  And by responsibility, we mean someone else’s responsibility.  I don’t know those people.  They’re probably low-income, we guess, or someone who’s not buying insurance not because they can’t afford it but because they’re the carefree grasshopper to our hardworking ants.  We don’t know their faces.

Here’s the thing – those two faces are the same.  Take a look.

This video was created in Maine, but in could just as well have been any state in the union.  We know the people who are desperate for change on health care – they’re the faces of our friends, our family, our neighbors, someone from our school, someone from our church.  Some of them have no coverage.  Some of them are underinsured.  Some of them have good insurance – damn good insurance – that fails them when they need it the most.

Health care reform isn’t just about the uninsured and it isn’t about the faces we don’t know.  It’s about the faces we do.

(Disclaimer – although I work for an SEIU local, I did not participate in the creation of this video.  The views expressed are my own.)