Health Care…For Whom?

Would someone please tell me why Americans are so upset about the very idea of single payer, universal health care?  I am taken aback by a nation that plasters “In God We Trust” over its money, its courthouses and courtrooms and other government buildings, a country that professes to be steeped in something that Christians label the Judeo-Christian tradition (although there is nothing similar about these two monotheisms save a single shared book and even that book is disputed in order and inclusion of texts), one that, at least in the shared book unequivocally asserts one’s absolute responsibility to care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger that dwell in your midst, a country where charity was raised to a government agency by George W. Bush and his faith based initiative.  What disturbs me is that in this nation of deep religious platitude one finds it necessary to argue against universal health care.  Just where is the requirement to care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger among you when denial of health care to some is tolerated?

Arguments against universal health care stem from self interest and greed.  The arguments against providing quality health care for all people living within the borders of the United States range from scare tactics or arguments without merit designed to frighten people into questioning their own common sense, to arguments about cost and, heaven forbid, an increase in taxes to pay for such a radical approach to caring for everyone equally.  Oh, but how radical can universal health care be?  The United States is the ONLY industrialized nation that does not have the ethical courage to care for all of her residents…citizens or not.  Fear and greed are the chief motivators that influence how Senators and Representatives cast their votes.  Oh, I left out the legislative temptation of the financial power of the insurance company and drug manufacturing lobbies, groups that spread money around to reinforce their own greed while working hard to maintain their influence on the seats of power in the United States.

Universal health care works all across Europe and Canada, and as Michael Moore pointed out in Sicko, in Cuba too.  We are the richest nation in the world and yet we collectively cannot muster the ethical courage to step away from our fears and our greed and begin to be responsible for the welfare of the other in our society.  By the way, we do have single payer health care but only for those having reached the ripe old age of 65…Medicare works for this strata of our population, so what about extending it to the widow, the orphan, and the stranger among us?  What about taking care of those in greatest need and make it free to all.  Only then can I be absolutely assured of fair and reasonable health care for myself.

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