A deeply troubling reality, an extraordinary statement about our country, but one that is very much the truth about where we remain as a nation.
I just finished reading Joe Klein's essay about healthcare in TIME Magazine. He refers to the quaint idea that all our citizens have access to guaranteed and affordable healthcare as "a liberal dream".
A liberal dream.
Shouldn't the right to healthcare be a basic and inviolate covenant between the government and its people? Or is it really just a dream of liberals?
And if providing quality and affordable healthcare is only a dream of liberals, doesn't this mean that there is a fundamental malignancy within our society? It seems we have only ourselves to blame for allowing this catastrophe to have festered for as long as it has. We elect people who historically have looked the other way and permitted such suffering and inhumanity to go uncorrected for decades.
Call me simple, primitive, or perhaps a liberal dreamer, but I am hopelessly confused that we continue to have a "discussion" about whether we can afford to provide healthcare to all our citizens. The fact that we continue to have such a discussion, for me at least, is a very disturbing piece of the American puzzle.
Certainly, we (the taxpayers), provide healthcare to all the politicians. Yes, I recognize we've discussed this perversion--the political class gives itself, the healthcare it denies us--ad nauseum, but it bears repeating. Because it is perverse, and Michael Moore noted that we Americans need to make the politicians fear us, sadly, we haven't done a good job of this.
And, allow me to focus you on another reality. Soon you will see tremendous hand-wringing about how we're going to pay for the extravagance of providing healthcare to all Americans. It is still considered an unaffordable extravagance in the richest country on the planet, to do for its citizens what the rest of the industrialized world takes for granted. You'll rarely if ever, see these "policy makers" link the explosion of costs to the for-profit health insurance industry. When you hear the political class and their pundit enablers lament the costs of healthcare, remember how quickly a trillion or so went the Wall Street and the banking industry.
I write this the day after the The Boston Globe reported increasing numbers of Americans are postponing or cancelling necessary surgical procedures. You're wondering how can this be in the richest country on the planet? Because healthcare is a privilege not a right.
Waves of suffering
Patients struggle on without surgery; hospitals feel pinch
Judi Campbell inches along at work with the help of a walker. Degenerative arthritis has ruined her hip and ravaged much of her body, so she takes prescription painkillers every four hours to cope.
"I cannot walk. I cannot live," she said. "I am in such pain. And I feel guilty about what I'm putting my husband through. If I have to get out of bed, I need his help."
Hip replacement surgery, however, will have to wait. Campbell, 62, already owes a Northampton hospital $1,000 for medical expenses not covered by her insurance - two $500 copayments for arthritis-related surgeries in 2007. She doesn't want to add to her debt, especially since the status of her secretarial job at a nonprofit organization is uncertain.
As the economic recession persists, people who are unemployed or worried about losing their jobs are putting off medical care and living with illnesses and conditions that aren't critical, but can be debilitating. Some are delaying having precancerous tumors removed; others are forgoing knee or shoulder surgery. While insurance often covers much of the costs associated with such procedures, there are usually deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses that can add up to thousands of dollars. For those lacking insurance, the price of most elective procedures is beyond their reach.
Why are we allowing people like Mr. Grassley to insinuate himself into crafting healthcare legislation, when he has long opposed the concept that healthcare is a right not a privilege?
And this makes me even more confused. Though Mr. Grassley and his ilk want plently of seats at the table, one of his compatriots and a leading light of the Republican party, a skillful hack named Frank Luntz, who forgive me, (I met him), is even more revolting in person than on Fixed News, is providing talking points to Republicans about how to "scare" Americans and hopefully kill healthcare reform.
Do yourself a favor a read Mr. Luntz's hate-filled instruction manual.
Then read Senator Jeff Merkley's diary.
Then, for the love of Jesus, fire up your phones and your righteous indignation because healthcare reform with a robust public option, won't happen, I repeat won't happen, unless everyone helps and works until their fingers are numb.
Stand With Dr Dean will soon become ground zero for organizing and activism.