My favorite idealist, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, proposed in his Oct. 8 column, "If Congress fails to pass comprehensive health reform this year, its members should surrender health insurance in proportion with the American population that is uninsured." He argues that the excellent coverage provided to each member of Congress and their respective families creates a "lulling effect," which detaches them from the urgency of the issue at hand. A randomly selected, proportional removal of their insurance could help put Congress in better touch with an issue that is a matter of life and death for a significant portion of Americans. If, for congressmen, insurance has this sort of "lulling effect," then being a student in college seems to have a coma/hibernation effect when it comes to the health care debate.

For several years following the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq, college students were popularly deemed politically dispassionate and apathetic. This was mainly because, compared to its historical parallel of Vietnam, there was (and still is) a noticeable absence of large-scale student protest over the war. The world's perception of college-age students changed during the 2008 election as it was reminded of the potential power of the demographic's collective voice. For the first time in history, our nation saw an electoral outcome heavily determined by the youth's substantial "rocking" of the vote, both in turnout and campaigning.

Fast-forward to today: The college-age population, which less than a year ago was electrified with excitement, seems to be taking a long break from activism-perhaps the worst-timed break possible. Although the lack of fierce debate over the invasion of Iraq is embarrassing, the argument that the war doesn't have much bearing on the everyday lives of Americans because of the lack of a draft is an unfortunate excuse. It is impossible to make any such excuse for apathy when it comes to health care reform. Though Brandeis requires that each of its students is insured, the moment we graduate from here, health care will be our own problem. By the time that happens, though (assuming our government doesn't become completely incapacitated), the debate will be over with or without the input of the college-age demographic. For example, Kristof's Sept. 12 column follows the tragic story of Nikki White, a young girl who "had systemic lupus erythematosus, a chronic inflammatory disease that was diagnosed when she was 21 and gradually left her too sick to work. And once she lost her job, she lost her health insurance."

As someone who has been doing his best to follow the debate from within the bubble of the university setting-which is especially challenging in a place that never seems to have nearly enough nationally syndicated newspapers for those students interested-it seems that, similar to the 2008 election, the health care debate is often on the verge of being hijacked by special interest groups, spreading fallacious information intended to influence opinions through fear. Just this past weekend, Obama assailed insurance companies for their deplorable attempts at stifling the debate: "They're flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions. And they're funding studies designed to mislead the American people. . It's smoke and mirrors. It's bogus," he said this Saturday, in the White House's weekly address to the nation.

For some reason, during the 2008 election, young people largely seemed to be able to differentiate between outrageous lies and serious discussion. But because of the absence of young voices in the health care discussion, the crucial role of dissecting and inspecting the validity of rhetoric on all sides has been almost entirely left up to Americans' two favorite anchormen-Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert (aside from most newspapers and radio).

While they're doing this job quite admirably, most of the intricacies of health care reform are inaccessible to even fierce followers of politics. Unlike the election, which attracted sexy, non-expert celebrities because issues could be discussed in broad, sweeping terms, the debate over health care reform is being fought over technicalities found within thousands of pages filled with unsexy legal and medical jargon. The lack of thorough understanding on the issues leaves the American people especially susceptible to fear tactics employed by those against any sort of progress.

Interest and involvement in the discussion over health care reform is not only imperative for levelheaded college students for practical reasons. Our participation should be equally rooted in a moral obligation. Kristof's column points to a recent peer-reviewed article in the American Journal of Public Health which links 45,000 American deaths a year to a lack of health coverage: "The collapse of health reform would be a political and policy failure, but it would also be a profound moral failure. Periodically, there are political questions that are fundamentally moral, including slavery in the 19th century and civil rights battles in the 1950s and '60s. In the same way, allowing tens of thousands of Americans to die each year because they are uninsured is not simply unwise and unfortunate. It is also wrong-a moral blot on a great nation."

Health care reform is one of those rare issues in our country's history where the essence of the discussion is between right and wrong. To use the ever-poignant words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (which were aptly often heard from the president this past election season), the power of our collective voice on the issue of health care needs to be heard loudly and clearly because of the "fierce urgency of now.