In the meantime, as a distraction, here are some things you might want to click on and check out:

1. Is it possible that all this political rage is not actually about healthcare?
2. I enjoyed the documentary “This Film is Not Yet Rated,” which takes a look at the MPAA’s system of assigning maturity ratings to films, and how it affects the production, distribution and success of movies in the U.S.  The themes were that (A) a small group of anonymous and inaccessible people have significant influence in deciding what becomes a part of our culture, (B) anything that depicts the sexual empowerment or fulfillment of women is dangerous or obscene, and (C) anything that isn’t 100% pro-military, pro-war is dangerous or obscene.

   I know these themes will be shocking to you, so just take a minute and catch your breath.

3. There’s a new federal policy that says cycling and other forms of non-motorized transportation should be treated as equal to motorized transportation when we plan our cities and streets.  Yay! But apparently, this is going to lead to economic catastrophe.  RUN FOR–er, uh, I mean DRIVE FOR YOUR LIVES!!
4. Have you tried playing Glenn Beck Bingo?  It’s a great party game.
5. I really hope none of the commenters on my review of Lierre Keith’s “The Vegetarian Myth” were among the militant vegans who assaulted her at a recent speaking engagement.  Um, you’re doing it wrong.

There now, you almost forgot about my blogging transgressions, didn’t you?

To be sure, I think the President (and any President) deserves an unusually high level of courtesy in that particular setting, and that Wilson’s actions were unusual and historically unprecedented in their dis-courteousness.  But I don’t think they represent some aberrant, isolated flare-up on the part of a single person.  Instead, I think Joe Wilson has highlighted the fact that much of the conversation about health care reform – and much of the way politics are done in Washington in general -  is driven not by respectful dialog, but instead by emotionally charged, disrespectful outbursts that come in many forms.  As unfortunate and ill-considered as his shouting was, we can at least commend him for acting from the heart, where as his peers in Congress typically reserve their uncivil comments for settings where they know they won’t be held as accountable to them, masking their failure to engage in real dialog with feigned respect and disingenuous, emotionally manipulative exchanges.

By yelling out at the President during the speech, Joe Wilson showed the true colors of the way most politicians are approaching the health care debate: interrupting, yelling, disrespecting, misrepresenting, trying to get a laugh or a jab in without ever engaging the substance of the issues at hand, and with so little concern for the people actually affected by the conversation that you’d think they weren’t actually agents of democracy, just people who play them on TV.

It’s not clear to me why we entrust such an important conversation to such ineffective, duplicitous people.  Is it clear to you?

There are some exceptions to this phenomenon: politicians, issue advocates and community organizers who are actually trying to engage the substance of the issues and work for a real solution that actually addresses real needs.  You don’t hear from those people too much – they certainly aren’t interrupting Presidential speeches or inciting hateful speech at Town Hall meetings.  They’re too busy trying to get something done, and sometimes, the broken systems and processes in place actually move aside enough for those people to succeed.  But we know that’s rare, and certainly not as exciting to talk about on cable news as death panels, abortion funding and illegal immigrants stealing your soul in the night.

In this sense, then, it might benefit us all for members of Congress to stop pretending and speak from their hearts like Joe Wilson did.  If you follow that to its natural conclusion, you know it would get pretty messy before it got any better, but perhaps it would be a step forward in creating a process that honors real dialog and integrity, instead of political convenience and artificial appearances.

I would be happy for our representatives in Washington – who often hold life and death issues in their hands – to show us their true colors on live national television every day.  Wouldn’t you?

But if we accept for a moment that people in this country will probably continue to obtain medical services via some kind of national insurance system for the foreseeable future (and coldly put aside the many millions of people without even that benefit right now), then we need to talk about the practice of insurance rescission.

Rescission is literally the process of saying, “this contract we had is no longer valid.”  In the health care system, it’s practiced as the health insurance companies telling their customers that they will not honor the contract to provide insurance, leaving the customer to fend for themselves in paying any medical bills that might be incurred.

Unfortunately, the rescinding of the contract usually happens right when an insured person needs that money the most – they have a medical condition that needs a treatment they could not otherwise pay for themselves, and in evaluating whether or not to cover it, the insurance company gets to say “sorry, you’re on your own.”  Though the companies defend the practice as important to combat fraud, they can do this based on even the tiniest mistake or apparent misrepresentation in your health insurance application paperwork (e.g. you forget to check a box somewhere, you didn’t know the proper medical terminology for something), and it turns out that they often do take advantage of any loophole they can find.  As someone involved in helping my co-workers complete their own insurance applications, this is particularly striking to me, given how complex and confusing those forms can be; I wouldn’t be surprised if every single one of us has some grounds for rescission somewhere in there.

(I’ve referring to “they” and “them” here when it comes to the health insurance companies.  While it’s tempting to think there might be one or two exceptions to the rule, I’m not yet aware of any health insurer that bucks the trend when it comes to building rescission clauses into their contracts.  Do you?)

If you want a sense of how bad this practice has gotten, listen to a recent segment produced by This American Life (it’s in “Act 3: Restrictions May Apply) where they not only have interviews with people who have been deeply wronged by the health insurance companies through rescission, but also play audio of insurance execs being confronted about how they can sleep at night doing this.

I’m not an expert on the health insurance industry, but I have some simple suggestions for how we might want to change this system (again, within the context of keeping some sort of overall national health insurance system):

1. Legally limit rescission to all but the most egregious cases of demonstrably intentional fraudulent activity. If the insurance company can prove under the standards of law that an insured customer set out to abuse the insurance system and succeeded, then they can use those grounds to extract themselves from the contract.  Otherwise, even if there was accidental misrepresentation or inaccurate information provided during the application process, the contract should be fully honored.
2. Improve the attention paid to health insurance applications before coverage is offered. If the insurance companies are going to base rescission practices on administrative typos and errors, they shouldn’t offer coverage to you in the first place until all of those materials have been audited for any possible issues that could cause problems later.  It’s just cruel to give someone the impression that they have insurance coverage when a loophole exists from the beginning that makes it essentially at the whims of the insurers.
3. If a contract is rescinded, the health care company should refund all premiums paid AND some additional corrective payment that addresses the hassle (or life-threatening delays) that someone might be facing as a result of the insurance company’s failure to meet the obligation it said it would.    If I open a savings account at a bank and they decide later that my account has to be closed because of a typo, they don’t get to keep my deposited funds or the interest my account has gained.

Despite my lack of faith in even the best intentions for a new health care system, I do hope that the current debate brings about some incremental positive changes in what we have now.  Ending the practice of rescission as we know it now would be a great step forward.