Still, we're only human, which means that we tend to be fond of the status quo, especially if it happens to be working well for us at the moment and regardless of how well it works for others.
And one of the obstacles to real reform that the president faces is that many, many Americans, not having had cancer or developed some other pre-existing condition and not having lost their health-care coverage by having as yet lost their jobs, are reasonably satisfied, at present, with the way things are.
But sometimes a fondness for the status quo blinds people to their own situations. Another conservative takes me to task in no uncertain terms for saying a few nice things about the health-care systems in all of the other industrialized countries in the Western world, which have managed to produce good coverage for all of their citizens, with less cost and with better health outcomes.
In a subsequent paragraph, she admits that she and her husband, self-employed and in their 50s, struggle to pay more than $1,100 per month for some version of health insurance. But even she sees that, given the health issues that inevitably crop up in everyone's life at her approximate age, her health-care future is, at best, uncertain.
Her fear of impending poor health inclines her to hold on to the coverage she has, in spite of its devastating expense and uncertainty, in the hope of reaching the government-run shelter of Medicare without a catastrophe.
Nevertheless, polls would number her and her husband among those who have health insurance, and probably among those who object to reform.
On the flip side of her situation are the young and healthy, who are as yet na
