Trying to win one for the ‘Bammer

How obvious can you be?  This weeper was big on today’s Chi Trib front page:

When 17-year-old Brianna Rice was diagnosed with celiac disease in February, she had health insurance.

She doesn’t now.

In the months that followed her diagnosis, her insurance company, American Community Mutual Insurance, combed through her medical records and ruled that her parents lied on her application last year.

In May, American Community not only canceled her policy, but also rescinded coverage all the way back to the day it started — Nov. 1.

Etc. 

Add Georgie Ann Geyer’s column of personal trial-morphed into argument for ObamaCare, and you have a one-two effort to massage believers and seduce fence-sitters:

WASHINGTON — I am sitting here, filled with a disbelief so profound about those of my fellow citizens who don’t seem to believe that we are in the grasp of horrendous health-care and insurance problems that I could scream, were not so many others screaming!

I could buy the ensuing sentiment if it were about impending economic dissolution through national debt that throttles growth and inflates the cost of everything in sight:

[I]t would seem that many Americans still don’t believe we have a deadly serious dilemma. It’s the old “It-can’t-happen-to-me” theme, mixed up with the ridiculous idea that government can’t do anything good at all. So let me offer my own personal story.

It’s a sad story, well told.  But she urges on us a course that will lead to a much sadder one for most of us, being “deeply touched,” as she is,

by the overarching idea behind President Barack Obama’s speech last week. “It is wrong,” he said, for not all Americans to have health insurance, “and nobody should be treated that way in the United States of America.”

Or anywhere else?  Sad it is that a smart woman with decades of experience in analyzing and deciphering world problems would so judge a national crisis as to find herself

wondering whether those who are so perfervidly against government-run alternative health insurance care at all about those of us whom the private health-care system has treated with such errant and selfish shabbiness. Who knows? Maybe next time it will be one of them.

Maybe next time it will be all of us sinking into economic and civilizational mediocrity in a fond, foolish hope inspired by deeply touching oratory.

Meanwhile, how about a newspaper with editors who aren’t so obvious about where they stand?

Later, from Reader M.: I had the same impression you did when I got my Tribune Daywatch this morning.  Yes we need healthcare reform – I get it.  Let’s deal with unscrupulous insurance companies.  Better yet, let’s deal with ambulance chasing lawyers. 

But let’s not rush into something because of a tug at the heartstrings – whatever we decide to do in a moment will take years to undo, if it is poorly crafted.  My daughter lives in Canada, and has seen the real deal when it comes to government healthcare.  She is not impressed.  Neither am I. 

I am not happy with the status quo, but I don’t want a system that will ration care or limit my options if I choose to invest my own money in my health.