“No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. Post this in your status for the next 24 hours if you agree.”
It’s good to see we’ve reached the point of Utopian comments. This idealistic statement has been posted on facebook by five of my friends in the last day. I’ve even been told I missed the point of it. Mmmm… let’s see. I’m hearing some Beach Boys in my head….”Wouldn’t it be nice if we older…”. Oh ya, wouldn’t it be nice. It would be more than that, it would be ideal. It would be an ideal, Utopian medical care system. The likes of which may exist elsewhere, but not here. You’re in the US. Or have you forgotten? Now I’m going to respond to this hyper-buttercup and tulip fantasy with one of my Brillo pad reality checks using an amended version of the hype:
In the US it is most probable that people will continue to die because they cannot afford equal health care for chronic conditions, and millions will continue to file for bankruptcy because they get sick. It’s irrelevant who agrees with this statement.
This is a country run by banks, corporations and their engineered legislation. I’m not spewing conspiracy theory and rhetoric. Everything is for profit from birth to prisons and waging war to medical care. Thanks to the ideology of free market capitalism at any cost, including lives, it will stay that way. Any Utopian ideals, publicly supported or not, are meaningless if they conflict with any incentive or ability to generate revenue. And here we are. A genuine, epic, conflict of interests.
It is argued by one side that what is good for corporations, banks and Wall Street is always good for America. Corporations keep people employed. The other side argues that not everything should be for profit. I personally tend to agree more with this opinion but there is a very vocal group who oppose corporate oversight and regulation, in any form, because in their minds “Anything the government can do the free market can do better”.
So which is it? We should all know medical care will never be “free” (at least not in our lifetimes). It will either need to be paid for by the collective or the individual. This is now the center of the debate. Many feel like the collective should take care of the indigent while others feel that individuals should be responsible for themselves and/or their family, never another.
Regardless of partisanship, I’m concerned with the mere attempt to simplify such a complex issue with a singular, idealistic expression. I’d like it if no one on earth ever went hungry again, no one ever died of another intestinal cancer, or ever committed another act labeled terrorism. But I’m going to try to stay in a world where rocks are hard and water is wet. Anything else would be a delusional fantasy ripe for a let down. So I’ll wait for the next idealistic comment to come from the far right…
“Government should be absolved from people lives entirely, all illegal aliens should be deported, and no one should ever pay taxes again. Post this in your status for the next 24 hours if you agree.”