Going Viral...ha ha. Get it? VIRAL.

I haven't gone to any healthcare town halls. Because the last few places I've LIVED lived have been liberal enclaves (Cambridge, Berkeley, San Francisco), I have a tendency to ignore all the action alerts that pour into my inbox every day. I mean, I feel pretty confident that 1) Nancy Pelosi's mind is made up, and 2) She's voting my way.

My mom's going to a town hall tonight, though, and we had an e mail conversation the other day about what her sign should say. She was going to go with something like, "Lies are bad, dialogue is good." I don't think anyone would disagree with that, but I'm not sure that points to one side or the other. And the only thing I could think of as a better sign was: "My five-year-old was refused healthcare."

And it's totally ridiculous that Eden had to be denied before I could figure out something pithy to say about health care reform. I've always had relatively good care--or, at least, could afford my co-pay.

But last week's Newsweek, as usual, had some good talking points. Sharon Begley, who is perhaps the most readable science reporter on the planet, and to whom I'm constantly thinking of sending a fan letter, wrote an article called: "Attack! The truth about Obamacare." The article laid out the R's talking points versus the D's. The GOP has catchphrases like "death panels" and "standing between you and your doctor," whereas my team is working with "bending the cost curve" and "the status quo."

My girl Sharon, per usual, writes exactly what I wish I was thoughtful enough to say to naysayers: That the system is broken; that currently who stands between the decisions of you and your doctor is your insurance company; that people are prevented from leaving their jobs because the cost of carrying that insurance on their own is so expensive; that even in the last ten years, small businesses have dropped coverage by another 30%; that half of all personal bankruptcies are due to illness; that Medicare IS government-run healthcare; that the government is proposing that it pays for you to talk to your doctor about your end-of-life directive, not put you in front of a death panel; that the discussion of "cost effectiveness" is a mistranslation of the actual discussion of "medical effectiveness"--that maybe no one should pay for treatments that haven't been proven to work; that nothing in this bill mentions paying for sex-change operations; that abortion isn't covered in the bill, because the government has already banned using federal dollars for it; that people die every year because their insurance companies refuse to pay for treatment that might work--against doctors' wishes.

I think most of my Facebook friends are of a like mind, but I know there are at least a few who aren't. So from today until this debate is resolved, my status update is going to be a health care talking point. I only had one negative response to my status posting about Eden, and his comment was jumped on and he failed to respond to the challenge. Maybe if more of my "friends" were armed with talking points, they might get a little more fired up. Or at least know how to respond to crazy in-laws and the like.