Okay, so I talked to Senator Wyden today during his “sidewalk office hours” at the mall, and he brought up his universal health care plan (the Healthy Americans Act). I could only nod and smile — I like universal health care, after all but had forgotten the specifics of the bill. But now I remember reading about it on his website, and I did like it, but there is one thing that I was frustrated about:

The Healthy Americans Act will save health care providers from paying the real cost of fixing their errors. They do this by restricting the rights of people to access the courts in cases of malpractice.

If you look at the full description of the act (and yes, I know, that doc is 18 pages long, and the part I’m concerned about is on the bottom of page 17) it has this whole section of rewarding states who engage in “medical malpractice reform.” Some of us might think this refers to making sure there are less medical mistakes that ruin people’s lives or kill them, but it’s actually about minimizing the number of lawsuits and payouts that might affect the bottom line of medical providers. The part that is most frustrating is the proposals that states should:

(3) impose sanctions against plaintiffs and attorneys who file frivolous medial malpractice claims in courts; (4) prohibit attorneys who file three or more medical malpractice actions in states courts from filing others in state courts for a period of 10 years;

First, the whole “sanctions” piece — this will scare everyday folks (since most of us don’t have teams of lawyers) with dire consequences if we try to take someone to court and lose. Not only do we not get our medical bills paid for, but then we have to pay fines or penalties. This is clever — it saves effort for corporations who are too lazy to even countersue us for protecting ourselves. They want the state to take care of it for them with this mysterious “sanctions” process. And who will decide if sanctions are appropriate and impose the sanctions? Our peers from the community, like a jury, let’s say? Or a panel of folks from the industry? hmmmnnn…

And #4 is even more frustrating: insurance providers can have experienced attorneys represent them in malpractice cases, but consumers can’t. I say we can only keep #4 if it’s amended to read: “Medical malpractice insurance providers can only retain attorneys for a period of up to 90 days, at which time they must be fired, along with any support staff who may retain knowledge and expertise, and their case records purged as well.” Then we’ll have a level playing field among the attorneys in any malpractice suit because neither side can have experienced representation.

So, yeah, I’m sure that Senator Wyden has a whole legion of lobbyists and lawyers who can explain why these are “good ideas” — I’m curious what he would say if I asked him about this. Maybe I’ll go to the mall and look for him, once I’ve studied up on the issue here or here. In the meantime, let’s email Ron and tell him that yes, we want health care but also protection from medical errors.

And if you’re one of my friends outside Oregon, email your Senator and ask them to support the Healthy Americans Act.

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I think Senator Wyden may get to the mall more often than I do — he periodically puts up a sandwich board explaining he is having “Sidewalk Office Hours” and there he is, hanging out near the jewelry store, with people (like me) just wandering up to talk to him about how we need to get out of Iraq, how much money the tobacco lobby is spending to defeat Oregon’s Measure 50, the FCC, and other matters of national interest as people walk by with their Made in Oregon bags.

I caught him on a break, and kept him company while he ate a sandwich. I suppose I should’ve come up with a handy introduction, having just been warned by Jancee Dunn in her book But Enough About Me… that it’s useless and off-putting to say, “Hi, how are you?” to famous people. (But, in my defense, she’s writing about rock stars, who are way more famous than Senators. A rock star would create a mob scene at the mall as people crowded around them, which doesn’t happen to a man who’s proposing a national universal health care act… go figure.)

So I didn’t have a snappy introduction to loosen him up. I skipped right into asking him why Congress can’t defund the war — which is hard to ask without sounding a tad frantic. He replied, “I voted to defund the war, but I was only one of 14 senators. It’s the other 86 you have to talk to.” Hmmmn… not sure how I’m supposed to do that. I just looked at him blankly for a moment.

“Can’t you talk to them? Especially those Democrats. What’s going to get them on board? A lot of people I know are getting pretty disheartened because things haven’t changed since 2006 when we voted them in.” He seemed to agree with me on that one, but had no solution except to keep the issue visible and public (another reason to go to Seattle on October 27th). Well, I agree with him on that.
Other things we agreed on:

• Media consolidation: bad
• Amnesty for phone companies who help the government spy on citizens: bad (He brought that up, not me)
• Universal health care: good (see Wyden’s Healthy Americans Act)
• Tuna sandwich on whole wheat: good

We didn’t exactly have a fiery debate… mostly he said things and I nodded. The thing about talking to a senator is that his full time job is this stuff, so he knows the acronyms, he has teams of people telling him how to respond to every conceivable question… where I’m like, “Oh, look Senator Ron Wyden… what did I just email him about? Should I get a sin-for-my-heart-and-my-blood-sugar-bon while I’m at the mall? Is it okay to talk to him when my hair looks funny because I didn’t think I would run into my senator today?”

I brought up how much I liked Representative Blumenauer’s Phone Town Hall, where you could vote by pressing a certain number on your touch tone phone. I suggested he try it too. I told him I have a blog. Then, as a forty-ish white man whose every inch just screamed “I’m mainstream America and I vote!” walked up us saying, “My wife and I just LOVE you.” I thanked the Senator and headed back to my car.

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