How I think about progress, why I am hopeful

This post started out as a comment on Mallen's recent blog, but it was getting kind of long, so I just decided to share it with everyone on my own blog.  

Mallen gave us some updates on recent meeting. I was particularly interested to hear her mention the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. She mentioned that the act was passed by Congress in 1986, and that it intended to ensure that everyone had access to emergency rooms, even if they were unable to pay for their care. I was born in 1986, So, I guess that means all Americans should have had access to some kind of sick care since the year I was born. It's interesting to take victories like that for granted, when you are my age at least. Just over 20 years since we recognized that people should be able to get treated, and now I think we are actually getting ready to make sure that the treatment we all deserve will not bankrupt our country.

I hear that young people like me tend to be idealistic, optimistic (this is called "irrational" if you are cynical). Perhaps this is one of the reasons: We get to have these AHAA! moments where we look back at how different the world was around the time our lives began, how drastically different and in some ways less just it seemed. I guess if I had been born a few months earlier, and my parents were poor, they could have been forced to just have me in a bathroom somewhere or something? A lot of people still do not get the health care they need, but recognizing on some level that it is a right is a big deal, I think. And, these changes happened in a pretty short time period - my lifetime. Thinking about these changes in the short time since I was born, I can't help but respect the progress we've made, and be hopeful that the changes we will make in the next 20 years will be even greater.

cheers

Isaac