OBAMACARE AND THE PROPER ROLE OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN HEALTH LITERACY
IN HEALTH LITERACY
I must admit, I was excited to hear that Presi- dent Barack Obama called on public libraries to be involved in a consumer education cam- paign on healthcare reform. I did not attend the American Library Association’s (ALA) An- nual Conference in Chicago. I learned about the announcement on Facebook. Shortly after the 2013 conference, ALA’s president Barbara Strip- ling stated that librarians already help people in finding information about citizenship, disaster relief, and patents, and “we expect libraries will receive many inquiries from the public about the Affordable Care Act [ACA].” The Institute of Mu- seum and Library Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ramped up to help public librarians learn about the ACA (aka “Obamacare”). The National Network of Li- braries of Medicine (NN/LN), state libraries, and OCLC’s WebJunction prepared libguides and scheduled webinars. At the same time, those opposing the ACA took to the blogosphere. A bevy of comments
on Hot Air (hotair.com), a leading conservative blog covering the Obama administration, indi- cated disapproval for librarian involvement in such a partisan piece of legislation. In the com- ments for the blog post, “Newest Foot Soldiers for ObamaCare: Librarians,” one conservative librarian vowed not to “peddle a product that I vehemently disagree with.” Library volun- teers threatened to discontinue their support. And some posts challenged the whole concept of public libraries. That was the summer of 2013. We all expe- rienced the healthcare.gov rollout debacle in October. By November, I had to stop watching the train wreck to remind myself of why I was excited in the first place. I thought about my larger questions—those sparked by the idea that a president would extend an invitation to public librarians to become involved in health- care reform. How do Americans currently view public libraries? How thoroughly should public librarians learn about information resources?