Why settle for a national electronic health database?

I'm not sure what other ways the case for universal single-payer health care in the US needs to be made. My personal favorites are the historical/economic perspective Malcolm Gladwell provides in his 2006 piece for the New Yorker that remains one of my favorite non-fiction works of this decade (you know, the only one in which I've been able to drive so far and stuff), and Michael Moore's documentary SiCKO (which I feel OK plugging on Facebook because taking pot shots at the Flint haruspex has reached the level where he, like Manny Ramirez, has become unfairly undervalued as a contributor to our society). The human rights aspect of the discussion is self-evident. And yet, the best that Obama and his highly touted if not entirely novel National Coordinator of Health Information Technology have given us is promises of establishing a national electronic records system.

Even my beloved Progress Report never mentions the promised land of universal single-payer in its on-going coverage of the struggle to get a national electronic records system. Instead, they are focusing on the duplicity of right-wingers like Elizabeth McCaughey. Come on, that's so 2003 even Al Franken and I have moved on! Where are the prophetic voices continually calling out for this much-needed change? They are not on the fringe, yet they are not in the MSM. They are lost in the realm of ideas that are acknowledged to be valuable but "unrealistic", like evolving past the electoral college, legalizing marijuana, and getting rid of the designated hitter.

I leave you with another set of prophetic words, from the great Walter Sobchek: "Hey dude, don't go away man. Come on, this affects all of us man. Our basic freedoms! I'm staying. I'm finishing my coffee. Enjoying my coffee."

The Plague of Darkness

An excerpt from my comments on one of the commentary compilations from this morning:

Listening to a conversation with Mary Doria Russell, sci-fi author and convert to Judaism in the process of a popular series starting with "The Sparrow" this morning on a "Faith Matters" podcast, she brought up the commandment to always study Torah with someone else, so there is always another view, another way of looking at a parasha besides your own. URJ (Union for Reform Judaism) online is the only source I have seen that consistently gives a "Divrei Torah", and I appreciated it more in the context of that mention.

Each of us enters this sanctuary with a different need.

Some hearts are full of gratitude and joy:
They are overflowing with the happiness of love and the joy of life; they are eager to confront the day, to make the world more fair; they are recovering from illness or have escaped misfortune.
And we rejoice with them.

Some hearts ache with sorrow:
Disappointments weigh heavily upon them, and they have tasted despair; families have been broken; loved ones lie on a bed of pain; death has taken those whom they cherished.
May our presence and sympathy bring them comfort. . . .
( Gates of Prayer for Shabbat and Weekdays , ed. Chaim Stern [New York: CCAR, 1994], p. 103)

This meditation by Rabbi Stern resonated with me because I so often feel not just elements of both those states of heart, but so often it feels like there is an imbalance and one of them defines me as a person and will never change, despite what experience and belief tell me. There have been times in my life when I walked or sat with a heart "overflowing with the happiness of love and the joy of life" and was certain and satisfied that I had encountered a state where I could contentedly live the rest of my life. Other times, more often, or maybe it just seems like that, I haven't kept track (except for a brief experiment involving a chart on my dorm wall senior year), my heart feels that "Disappointments weigh heavily upon (it)" and this despair also seems permanent and how my life will always be lived. I am blessed with people to share both these states with, and feel buoyed by gratitude for that whichever direction my balance drifts.