I spent the last weekend in Florida, where I shot the second of the two Entitled to Life documentaries MoveOn.org commissioned me to make for other states. Perhaps our most compelling and heartbreaking interview was with Terinda Furman, a woman in Naples who suffers from a debilitating case of lupus that gives her extreme sensitivity to sunlight. Terinda is a go-getter, a very hard working and motivated woman who has had to learn to live with a myriad of conditions (related to the lupus and otherwise) which render her unable to work. She has tried over and over again. Even taking tickets in a movie theater is beyond her physical abilities. Yet she was dropped from traditional Medicaid over a year ago, and now she and her partner Liz are forced scrimp and find any desperate way they can just to get Terinda her medication, let alone doctor visits. In one afternoon I came to love Terinda and Liz, and it's horrible to see what they're going through.
Upon touching down for a layover in Denver, I checked my email and discovered that a fellow activist had sent me a link to a new website called unhealthyutah.com, attacking Gov. Gary Herbert's imminent Medicaid expansion alternative, tossing around the word "Obamacare" as many times as possible, and throwing out the same old spurious and disproven horror stories about the effects of expansion. I assumed it came from the Sutherland Institute ("Our ignorance can beat up your knowledge"), but it turns out that it's from another right-wing "think tank" some of our more conservative legislator like to reference, the Foundation for Government Accountability (a group so prominent and respected that Wikipedia is considering deleting the entry on them because it isn't meet "general notability guidelines"). And guess where this "think tank" is located? That's right, Naples, Florida. So why is a group in one of the states most hardly hit by politicians stubborn ideological refusal to expand Medicaid (so much so that they needed a struggling filmmaker from Taylorsville, Utah to come across the country and help them fight for it) meddling in Utah politics? It's one thing for Sutherland to keep attacking this, they're local. But Florida think tanks and Forbes magazine? All desperatey flinging the same disproven points at us again? Why is defeating Healthy Utah suddenly a cause celebre of the disciples of Ebenezer Scrooge nationwide? The answer is funny, frightening, and simple: they're scared.
Healthy Utah is the biggest modification of Medicaid expansion allowed to any state so far. It demonstrates not only that the federal government is willing to negotiate and make serious compromises to make Medicaid expansion happen in states that need it, but that expanding within conservative principles is possible. It shows that a right wing governor can work together with the Obama administration to craft a compromise that makes both sides happy, and they can do it for the least politically acceptable of reasons: it's the right thing to do and people need it. This is a disaster for groups like the Foundation For Government accountability (people promoting letting human beings die to satisfy they're political ideology are talking abut "accountability?), whose whole purpose for existing is to promote the current gridlock that says conservatives and liberals must be mortal enemies, that all forms of government welfare cause every ill from dependence to bubonic plague, that if we allow this to happen then by thunder within a year's time dogs will be cats and vice versa. The worst enemy of hysteria is truth, and Healthy Utah is becoming a powerful truth that not only gives tens of thousands of people access to healthcare that can save their lives or quality of life, but shows we don't have to be at war with each other.
I'm reminded of the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (everything comes back to a movie with me, and very often it's Star Trek), wherein peace between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire is imminent, and those who cannot accept the idea of peace between them commit desperate acts of sabotage to keep them as enemies. But of course, it's a movie, so people (and aliens) of goodwill on both sides work together for the common good and the dastardly plot is foiled. Well, what's happening here isn't a movie, but I can't escape the similarities. Those who don't want see left and right work together and create a compromise that works for both AND helps the people are throwing everything they can at Healthy Utah now that it's so close to happening. Will we let that fear defeat us? Or is this worth fighting for? Especially when we're so close to winning? I think we all know the answer.
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