OK, here’s Rake’s challenge: if you are currently without health insurance of any kind and are against health care reform, please write in and tell us why. I promise I will publish whatever you have to say.
My guess is that no one who has gone at least a year without health insurance is against health care reform. Everyone that I know who has spoken or written against universal health care already has insurance.
Should we be suprised? Probably not.
The latest predictable, cliche-ridden anti-health care reform editorial comes from John Howe, the wealthy and well-insured editor of our local newspaper, the Citizen.
The editorial was ostensibly about Michael Moore’s film, Sicko, but it really was an excuse to dust off all reasons why the insured don’t want to provide medical care to the uninsured. John writes like someone who knows he is entitled in a general way, and certainly entitled when it comes to the issues that divide rich and poor. Only a health care “have” could write with such insensitivity to the plight of the “have nots.”
His editorial follows a conversation I had two nights ago with a young man who was limping rather awkwardly out to a friend’s car.
“What’s the problem, Dave?” I asked him.
“I got two bad disks in my back from work,” he said.
“Gonna have someone look at it?” I asked, hopefully.
“Nope. No insurance and no one will take me.”
We talked about some other options, like pretending he had just landed from Mars without a social security card and showing up at some hospital’s emergency room. In that case, someone might look at him, but he still wouldn’t get the surgery he needs to repair his back.
I know Dave is a hard worker — he does yard work and painting for the wealthy landowners in Mitt Romney country, Wolfeboro, NH. But now he can’t work and his financial situation — near poverty level already — can only get worse.
In the Live Free or Die Hard state — and elsewhere across this Promised Land — Dave is out of luck. And people like John Howe intend to keep it that way.
For more on this topic, read our prior posts:
Far Right Dooms Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Reform.
Who Killed Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Reform?
4 responses so far ↓
ClapSo // July 1, 2007 at 2:43 pm
It’s a shame that the “knows he is entitled in a general way” types don’t understand that they are already paying for the uninsured, and in many ways. It’s a shame they don’t look deeper into our failed health care system and only rely on propaganda from the hmo’s and drug companies when looking for information on this issue. It’s a shame they won’t even bother to view a website like this one:
Physicians for a National Health Program
If they would just look at the numbers, they would see what is really going on…
The scientifically impossible I do right away
The spiritually miraculous takes a bit longer
Diana // July 15, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I am one of many American’s who don’t have health care insurance and it has come down to my husband and I sharing his blood pressure medication and me only taking one of the two needed medications for a heart condition but the people that have health care insurance in this country could not care less about me or all the other American’s that don’t have health care insurance. The old saying goes “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” and every one else walks around with blinders on!
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