Setting for a national crisis

As you read this, there is a writer somewhere in America deleting an essay about how best to improve our education system while maintaining federal solvency; a journalist has tucked an editorial that solves the problem of Palestinian sovereignity into a desk drawer; and yet another collection of rhyming couplets about genocide in Darfur, the consequences of global warming, and the dangers of adjustable rate mortgages goes unread, exposing more innocent people around the world to violence, privation, and long, confusing telephone conversations with bank representatives.

I know this to be true because that writer is me, that desk drawer is mine, and I rhymed those couplets myself.

Count me as one more victim of America’s health care crisis.

We’ve all heard the horror stories from the front lines of our national insurance debate: citizens who woke up one morning to find their premiums had been raised during the night, patients who learned that their coverage had been terminated because of a disease some insurance company decided was too costly to fight, good Americans who discovered that no insurance company would cover them because of a pre-existing condition, family members struggling to pay rising stacks of medical bills.

But there is a group of Americans whose stories have gone untold, whose struggles we never hear about. They are the silent victims of the health care crisis. I’m talking about writers. And now is the time to speak up for them.

Since that first crazy old lady stood up in that town hall meeting in early August to declare that President Obama wasn’t a real American, writers like me have had to spend all our time writing about health care, shelving other, equally important pieces in the name of satisfying the editorial desires of an uncharacteristically focused American public. We’ve written stories about White House political tactics, right-wing demagogues and their followers, the weak knees of the Democratic party, the strong knees of the Republican party, the conservative approach to civil disobedience, and on and on and on. Process stories, political stories, personal stories, op-eds, satires, single-panel cartoons: You name it; we’ve written it. When we wanted to write about gay marriage, we were told to write about health care. When we wanted to examine inconsistencies in the president’s position on enhanced interrogation techniques, we were told to write about health care. Every idea we’ve had over the last two months has been swallowed whole.

Writers are the unseen, unheard victims of the American health care disaster. True, we might not have cancer or AIDS or even diabetes, we may not be bankrupt or homeless, but we do know what it’s like to sit at a computer for hours at a time trying to come up with new ways of making fun of people who believe death panels really exist. And it’s starting to take a toll. Every day, reports come in of yet another political writer somewhere who is seriously considering giving up journalism altogether and going back to school. Is that really what this country needs right now? More graduate students?

Of course not.

Please help us: Call your congressman or senator today and tell them you want health care reform passed so that our journalists can get back to writing about congressional sex scandals and you can get back to reading about the season finale of True Blood.

Your writers will thank you for it.