Over the Christmas holidays, while serving warm Kringle, a local pastry delicacy to a houseguest who was as yet unaware of my commitment to the healthcare debate, I found myself forsaking measured reflection for advocacy. I was almost as heated as the Kringle in responding to my guest’s assertion that with so many Americans unacceptably without healthcare, given the complicities of the issue, aren’t we better off just passing the current legislation, warts, costs and all?

I realize my guest’s core reactions stemmed from feeling overwhelmed by the seemingly inscrutable nature of the problem, while wanting to assure healthcare for his fellow citizens. Americans want to do something when faced with a problem. This is a sentiment that bespeaks the essential decency underlying the debate, a concern for fellow human beings.

As a reasoned response to the “We’ve got to do something” instinct, I’m suggesting an op-ed by David Brooks in the New York Times, appropriately entitled “Hard Call.” In a few minutes of the reader’s time Brooks outlines the pros and cons of voting for Senate package as it was shaping up in mid-December. Today his points and insights are still relevant.

An important passage reads, “If this passes, we will never get back to cost control. The basic political deal was, we get to have dessert (expanding coverage) but we have to eat our spinach (cost control), too. If we eat dessert now, we’ll never come back to the spinach.” As the mother of two young children this analogy struck home.

As we seek and sort out options and solutions, respecting each other’s hopes and fears, I remind myself that the tone and style of the dialogue is as important as the content many times.