I finally did it! I have achieved what I thought might be an impossible task, but today, July 7, I succeeded.
For those of you who may not know this, Senator Evan Bayh is the most difficult person to reach in DC. You may not think so, but I have successfully reached every other office in DC I have contacted in the past 6 months. But not Senator Bayh. Oh, no. I typically get a message like, "Hello, I'm Evan Bayh, and I want to thank you for calling. We're experiencing a higher than usual call volume. Please leave a message and someone will get back to you." If you're lucky, the box for messages won't be full, although you'll never hear from anyone anyway.
Now this has been going on since late December or early January. I hate to break it to you, Senator Bayh, but if you're regularly having a higher than normal call volume, that becomes your norm. But I digress...
After giving up for a month or so, I decided to call Senator Bayh once again to ask his office some questions regarding healthcare reform. I have been trying to get questions answered for months. I've called offices across the country, but all I ever hear is, "You need to talk to Senator Bayh's DC office." But today, where the voice of a living, breathing person has eluded me, I found sweet success. Too bad the voice wasn't as sweet.
I've had a variety of questions, but today's question was new. (I do try to keep my questions current.) I recently read an article indicating that experts have been advising Congress and the administration that we would run out of money, most likely by the end of 2011, to help cover those individuals who are currently uninsured. There's $5 billion set aside, and it was supposed to last until sometime in 2014, but it doesn't look like we'll make it.
My question was simple: "Where are we going to get the money to pay for this?" I was concerned that we would face some kind of tax increase, so I wanted to know. Unfortunately, the other person on the end of the line didn't know. And since I don't know his real name (they often don't provide you with that information), let's call him John.
After months of calls and emails, being cut off and rudely treated by other office staff, I was going to get a straight answer. In this moment, I knew that my efforts were not in vain because I was calling the right person, and the Senator and his staff were going to answer to my question. The wait was over. Drumroll please… And here’s what John told me (sound of fanfare playing): this was no longer a Senate problem. The responsibilities had been moved from the Senate to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and they would be the ones to answer my question (sound of deflating balloon).
So after several months of phone calls and a number of emails, the answer to all my healthcare questions boiled down to these four words: "It's not my [the Senator’s] problem." I pointed out that the Senator voted for the bill and that everyone I had spoken with said that his office would be able to answer my questions. But I guess not. It's not his problem.
Unfortunately, that didn’t really help me. I asked some other questions about where I could get the information. He told me that I could read the information on the web. But that created a two-fold problem. First, it was the information on the Internet that was making me ask the questions. Second, I had encountered some – how should I say? – “misleading” material several months ago. I had called the White House comment line regarding some points I wanted to make regarding information on the White House website. When I read the person the information on the site, she said, "Oh, that can't be right." The person on the phone told me the site wasn’t right! In fact, she made the same comment regarding another statement on the website. Now isn't that a dilemma?
That left me with yet another question: “What am I supposed to believe?”, which I asked. And shockingly, John answered, “Whatever you want to believe.” Dost mine ears deceive me? What did you just say? I can believe whatever I want to believe about this reform. Really? That’s the best you have.
And here are a few other inquiries I made. Senator Bayh has mentioned that the bill is flawed, but something needed to be done, so he voted for this bill. Well, that makes me wonder what was flawed, right? Of course, I asked. The answer: “Well, most likely he meant that not everyone would agree with it.” Definition of flawed: “having imperfections.” Either my vocabulary level has diminished, or Senator Bayh needs to hire a new writer. By the way, I did note that I don’t think that his definition of flawed was quite right, but I was told it was open to interpretation. And I won’t even mention what he implied about my level of intelligence.
Basically, the conversation boiled down to this. If I wanted to understand the bill, I would have to read it. Since I’m not a lawyer, and I am not kidding about this next part, he suggested that perhaps I would need to hire a lawyer to interpret the information for me so that I could understand it. And I was wondering what I was going to do with that wad of cash I just happened to have lying around. Now I know. I’ll go hire that lawyer down the road to read a 2000+ page document and tell me what it all means. (By the way, that’s unlikely because not even the lawyers agree on what it means yet.)
On top of all this, the guy was sorely misinformed. He told me that I didn’t really need to worry about these laws yet because they don’t go into effect until 2014, which isn’t true either. There are changes that are taking place already.
And if you thought it couldn’t get any better, it does. I decided to call Bayh’s Indianapolis office to complain. She immediately told me that to have my questions answered, I needed to call the DC office. I told her what “John” had told me. She then said I should call the White House. I explained my previous call there and how they don’t really answer questions on a comment line, which is why I guess they call it a comment line.
Her response: “Well, I guess that’s it.”
I guess it is.
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