and btw regarding “voice”:

Dave, I’m glad that you received excellent healthcare from a responsive and responsible physician, but many of us did not. There is nothing wrong with writing from the standpoint as an “injured” patient, however, if that is the truth. To do otherwise when you or a family member has experienced unnecessary damage via the current health care system is to “mask” true feelings, to accommodate, as an exchange for allowing a single portion of your agenda to be heard. This “masking” strategy is laid out in last week’s New York Times book review on Booker T. Washington.

The e-patient movement did not begin because everything was hunky dory. To paraphrase, it began because it could — the Internet offers vast possibilities for shining a light in dark places — and due to a sense of outrage over what was going on. Over the last eight years or more, Americans have become dulled to the possibility of outrage and therefore protest due to mass media and complacency, basic lack of education, and the fact that the workings of government, like the workings of the healthcare system, are made deliberately opaque to the general public so as to allow corporate interests to go about their work in peace and prosperity.

And look where it’s got us.

No one really protested the Iraqu War, even though the costs surpass that of the stimulus package. Now, apparently, finally, there is a citizens’ movement to protest housing foreclosure and eviction — to make it public — to shine the light on the folks and institutions BEHIND the financial maneuvering. I cannot imagine anything more convoluted than to be evicted by a bank or lending company which uses your tax money to stay in business while refusing to extend or alter credit.

Nice gig if you can get it.

The first step in health care reform is shining the light where the sun has not heretofore shined. Most folks don’t have a CLUE about billing codes, that they are the secondary payor, etc. The New York Times editorial today speaks of rating physicians, i.e., transparency, which has the profession in a panic. That ought to tell you something.

If legislative solutions are difficult to accomplish, what’s the alternative for creating change, other than waiting around helplessly hoping?