By Dave Ferrara, HRTS Executive Director
A couple of months ago HRTS was approached by the Entertainment Industry Foundation and the Motion Picture and Television Fund to join a partnership behind AARP’s Divided We Fail campaign, a non-partisan initiative to focus attention on the looming health care and financial security crisis. As I sat and listened to the idea, I found myself thinking about my own situation and how this looming crisis might actually affect me personally. Okay…in truth my first thought was “what crisis?” but I soon was disabused of that thought. To be frank, I haven’t ever really thought much about my health care. I’ve typically had insurance available through whatever employer I had at the time. I went to the doctor, wrote a check for my co-pay, and really thought nothing more of it. Those times when I was either between jobs or working as an independent contractor I simply went without doctor’s visits and why not, I was a healthy individual by and large. Why should I worry? Forty-seven million uninsured in our country? That was certainly someone else! Of course I strongly believed that “someone”, maybe the government or employers should take care of those poor, unfortunate souls. But again, what does that have to do with me?
If I only knew how much I didn’t know! Turns out… for a portion of the time…I WAS one of those 47 million. Funny, I didn’t “feel” uninsured…but that was only because I never faced a major illness or injury. I was one of the lucky ones. And even when I was covered by one group plan or another, I simply became one of the 17 million additional “under” insured, which means my insurance, while it paid a good amount of any possible maladies I may incur, would not cover everything and I was but one heart attack or major surgery away from having to cough up what could add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket if I wanted to…actually survive! I don’t know about you, but I’ve looked recently and with $4 plus gas and a cost of living in LA that could support many third world countries, I’m not exactly tripping over stacks of thousand dollar bills lying around my house.
And what if my illness required long-term care?
I didn’t realize it but roughly 80% of long-term care in our country is actually provided in the home by unpaid family members or friends because insurance as it exists often does not cover it. That sucks for me because I am not married, have a 21 year old daughter who can barely keep her fish alive and I have no friends. (Okay, I’m joking about the friends) but really, how many of your friends could you actually count on to drop everything to take on caring for you in your home? And I know my daughter loves me and would be there….but I’ve also seen how the fish is doing!
From a purely business perspective, I didn’t know that a company such as General Motors actually pays more for health care that it does for advertising and steel. Think about that next time you’re shopping for a car and wonder how it could cost so much? And what is the net effect on businesses of the hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies every year that are caused by medical expenses? Every one of us will feel the added costs in the everyday things that we pay for, caused by these businesses absorbing all those bankruptcies.
Okay, you say. I get it. And certainly I didn’t write the above to regale you with a tale of woe, but instead to maybe spark a glimmer of understanding that the health care crisis is not just about those 47 million uninsured, or the 17 million additional under-insured, or about Democrats or Republicans or even my daughters fish, but it is instead a looming storm that is going to affect each and every one of us in some way. It’s not going away. Ever. Unless we as individuals start taking it seriously and begin to confront the issue.
If you attended our recent panel on this issue you heard Jeffrey Katzenberg, Sally Field, Neal Baer, John Wells, D.L. Hughley, Bill Lawrence, Leeza Gibbons and AARP’s Nancy LeaMond throw down the gauntlet to Hollywood to work to shine a light on this very important issue, both through the entertainment we create as well as through the things we do individually on a daily basis. I’m going to quote from the “take action” page of the luncheon program here because I am not talented enough to say it better:
“History shows that small, individual actions can combine to accomplish great deeds. That is the driving force of Divided We Fail – that working together, we can change the system so that every American gets the medical help they need without worrying about how to pay for it. We can begin with what we do best – use entertainment to draw attention to America’s health care crisis and to encourage our fellow citizens to take action.”
By fellow citizens, that includes you and I… For more information on what some of those actions might be… Just email me or give me a call and I’ll send you the info. Or you can visit the Divided We Fail.org website for more information.
