I Thought I Died

And Went To The Members' Reading Room

How could I live here so long and never see the inside of the main building of the Library of Congress Main Hall. Today, thanks to NYU and a lecture sponsored by gracious benefactors in conjunction with a distinguished former member I got to sit in the "members room" of the Library of Congress and wonder what it would be like as I listened to Senator Chris Dodd talk about the historic Health Care initiative. I could go on and on about that, and will in future posts (many) but let me rant a bit about how wonderfully blessed we are to have such a building here in DC and suggest you visit if you have not recently. The Law Library of Congress is in a totally different place/building so I can't remember if I ever was in the main building, and if so, it didn't look like it does today.

The librarian of Congress noted that the reading room for members historically was a place where the members frequently went, with reading tables, table lights (such as you see in places like Penn Law Library or the McDonough law library at Georgetown) old bookcases, etc.
I had a grandmother with a masters' degree from Columbia Teachers' College in Education and Library Science who was a librarian at a college in Pennsylvania so I was born with a love of old dark wooden panelled libraries and fat bulging leather chairs. The members' room has ceiling paintings/frescos suggesting a Medici Palace over a government building built by the Army Corps of Engineers "under budget and on time" as Dodd explained proudly.

Dodd opened his talk with a tribute to something so marvelous I couldn't believe it. Did you know that one of those rare Guttenberg bibles is sitting in an Exhibit frame in the Main Hall of our US Library of Congress? I couldn't believe it. Then I noticed on the other side of the Hall that there was an authentic "Mainz" Bible from the Cathedral of Mainz in Germany which is an ornately illustrated manuscript bible painstakingly copied by monks from the 15th Century, sitting right inside our Us Library of Congress. This large bible was placed for the lector to read during the Mass, which totally fascinated me because I actually get to do that once in a while and imagined reading from something so beautiful.

Without getting into the minutia of the health care issue or debate I have to say that I am so grateful for such a monumental achievement and that there are people like Chris Dodd who did not give up the ship in spite of all the falderall- He noted that there was a lot of misinformation in the media-there are no death panels- He noted that Ted Kennedy made this his life's work and was inspired originally by his son's cancer. His son was in a control group of free experimental drugs and when the drugs were found to work they were no longer free and the people in the control group who could not afford them discontinued treatment tragically. Chris Dodd noted that when the town hall meetings were in their frenzied hayday last August, he was at Sloane Kettering in New York having surgery for Prostate Cancer so had first hand experience with the medical care issues. He also noted that recently his young daughter (don't you love it when people have kids later in life, so inspiring) had to go to the emergency room he discovered a disturbing number of people whose kids had to use the emergency room as their primary care physicians because the parents could not afford the premiums.

Chris Dodd, who sponsored the Family Medical Leave Act understands better than anyone what the costs of health care are to a family and he understands that the prevention aspect of the current bill will do a lot to reduce costs for everyone all around, including the deficit.

While the bill remains in part controversial, Dodd noted that if even the few things that kick in immediately were the full extent of the bill it would be a good bill (elimination of pre-existing coverage exclusions including for millions of kids not now covered, elimination of caps or denials mid-treatment, etc., young people able in this economy to remain covered under parental policies longer, elimination of donut holes in medicare, etc.) The exchanges foreseen should also be viewed as something that will revolutionize the delivery of health care.

Dodd spoke movingly of FDR's vision of a country free from Fear. He noted the quiet fear that parents have when their kids are coughing in the room with a fever as they pray that they don't need to go to the doctor or hospital because they cannot afford it, the fear that seniors have when they have to cut their meds in half so they can afford groceries at the same time, the fear that a disease or injury will bankrupt you. This is something that this bill attacks because that sort of fear is unacceptable. We should not be a country, the wealthiest in the world in which people Fear that they will be bankrupted by being well. An unconscionable percentage of bankruptcies in this country are due to medical cost issues.

We have a lot of work to do still he concluded. And I wanted to help.