He said how deeply he cared about his community, his patients, and his professionalism. He told why he felt lucky to be serving, and how willing he was to try out new ways to meet needs, even while resources get tighter. He said how offended he was by waste in the health care system — even in Reedsport — and how hard he wanted to work to make sure that every single thing done to, for, and with patients and families would actually help them — on their terms, not his. And — most importantly — he asked for help — for a context of policy, payment, and information that, simply put, would help him get his work done with pride and joy. “If things don’t change soon,” he told me last week, “I am not sure how we can keep going.”
Cynicism grips Washington. It grips Washington far too much ... far too much for a place that could instead remind us continually of the grandeur of democracy. I vividly remember my first trip ever to Washington, DC. I was twelve years old, and friends took me to the Lincoln Memorial just after sunset. I looked from the statue of Abraham Lincoln, past the Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument, to the glowing Capitol Building in the distance — the same Capitol that I saw outside my office window every day for the past 16 months. And, twelve years old, I cried in awe and admiration for — what shall I call it? — majesty.
Two weeks ago, Congress’s approval rating fell to an all-time low: 9%.
How did that happen? It happens when the cynics are winning. In a city where everyone wishes to be in a room they are not yet in, it is easy to see everyone as on the make, everyone maneuvering, everyone with elbows sharpened. It becomes too easy to lose hope and confidence, and to forget what can be noble in human nature.
When the lens through which one sees the world magnifies combat, dissembling, and greed, then trust decays and those who deserve to be trusted feel bad — misunderstood, confused, and impeded in their good works.
Dr. Robert Law is not cynical, and he is not on the make. He is dedicated to a life of service to a community he loves, and in which he raised his own three children — Alison, Brian, and Duncan. The job of public servants is to serve him so that he can better serve others. He needs help, resources, encouragement, voice, and respect. His promise — what he can offer our nation — has nothing to do with preventing fraud, holding his feet to the fire, or audits, and it has little to do with payment for performance, public measurement, incentives, or accountability. He is a good person who needs dignified assistance to do good work … and he is legion. He can be the future. He, in fact, can and will rescue us, if we will help him help us.
If lesson one for me is, “Remember the patient,” then lesson two is this: “Help those who help others.” Those thoughts — not the negativity — guided m[e] in DC, and they made my time there meaningful.
They are reminders of what is truly important; not the noise, but simply this: to help the people who need our help the most.
Inscribed on the wall of the great hall at the entrance to the Hubert Humphrey Building, the HHS Headquarters in Washington where my office was, is a quotation from Senator Humphrey at the building’s dedication ceremony on November 4, 1977. It says: "The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped."
I believe that. Indeed, I think that Senator Humphrey described the moral test, not just of government, but of a nation. This is a time of great strain in America; uncertainty abounds. With uncertainty comes fear, and with fear comes withdrawal. We can climb into our bunkers, each separately, and bar the door. But, remember, millions of Americans don’t have a bunker to climb into — they have no place to hide. For many of them, indeed, the crisis of economic security that we all dread now is no crisis at all — it is their status quo. The Great Recession is just their normal life.
The rate of poverty in this country is rising. Over 100 million Americans — nearly one in every three of us — is in poverty or near-poverty today — 17 million of them children. I will tell you — state by state, community-by-community, and in the halls of Washington, itself — the security of the poor — their ability to find the health care they need, and the food, and the housing, and the jobs, and the schools — all of it, hangs by a thread. The politics of poverty have never been power politics in America, for the simple reason that the poor don’t vote and the children don’t vote and the sickest among us don’t vote. And, if those who do vote do not assert firmly that Senator Humphrey was right, and if we do not insist on a government that passes the moral test — the thread will break, and shame on us if it does.
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