While we sleep

So many things happen, so much goes on, and it's impossible to keep up with it all. It's frustrating and sometimes depressing. Here's an example.

From the August 2004 issue of the American Journal of Nursing (AJN), I learned of H.R.3722, the proposed Undocumented Alien Emergency Medical Assistance Amendments to last year's Medicare deform bill. They were introduced in the House of Representatives by Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA).

This utterly reprehensible piece of trash would deny hospital emergency rooms federal reimbursement for the costs of treating uninsured undocumented workers unless the ER obtained from them personal information and biometric data and forwarded it to Homeland Security for the purpose of initiating deportation proceedings. More: It would empower hospitals to deny treatment altogether if it determined that such treatment could wait until the person was deported or if the expected cost exceeded $50,000.

This would, of course, intimidate both undocumented and documented immigrants - and even some citizens - from seeking needed assistance and put hospitals in the position of being immigration cops who would either have to obtain the information required from everyone who came through the door or, more likely, engage in blatant racial profiling.

I dove headfirst into Google, only to discover not only that this had been a topic of discussion among health care professionals and some blogs (the Google keywords "undocumented alien emergency medical assistance amendments" returned 4,000 hits) but that the final vote on the bill was on May 18 - more than two and a-half months ago - when it was demolished by a tally of 88 yeas to 331 nays. Even the Republicans turned away from it by a margin of 86-133.

(If you want to see if your rep is on the roster of shame that endorsed this exercise in nativist bigotry, the roll call is here.)

The thing is, even though this had a happy ending, it's still frustrating because here was something that was introduced, discussed, debated, and voted on - and I didn't even know it had happened until after the fact. Even then, it was only because it was pointed out to me.

I've said before that in this blog I try to pay a little more attention to the things I don't see getting a lot of attention at least among the Big Boys and Girls. But things like this make me wonder what else is going on out there of which I'm unaware, what other assaults on justice and decency are being undertaken that don't rise high enough to be picked up on the - or, more properly, my - political radar. What, that is, are they getting away with simply because we don't know about it until it's too late?

It's easy to feel overwhelmed at times and I fear I do now. I just have to keep reminding myself of the advice I've given to others: Just do what you can how you can, whatever and however much that is. Doing something, no matter how small, is better than doing nothing.