The United States is the only industrialized nation without cradle-to-the-grave, universal health care. In no other developed country would a child with cancer have to go without care because an insurance company decided it was not profitable enough to cover him.
Once again, I find myself wondering how it is that our health care system is such an abominable, inexcusable mess. How is it that we can fund two wars halfway around the world, while also engaging in the associated nation-building...and yet we lack the wherewithal to provide quality, affordable coverage FOR EVERY AMERICAN? People die every day in America from treatable, curable diseases...and yet we have both the wherewithal and the money to bomb villages in a Third World country? Why is it that when people compare health care systems, ours invariably ends up being mentioned in the same breath with place like Slovenia and Liberia? No disrespect to those two countries, of course, but neither are what anyone would reasonably call a world power. Yet both treat their people as if they are worthy, valuable, and deserving of medical care. Right-wingers deride the health care systems of countries like Canada, England, and Norway as "socialized medicine"...but at least those countries make health care a priority, one that ALL citizens have access to regardless of economic or social status.
Here we are, the largest, most powerful economic and military power in the world...and yet people all too often live and die based on the contents of their wallet. When a five-year-old boy is denied life-extending cancer treatment, something is horribly wrong. When a 45-year-old woman with a serious medical is reduced to advertising for husbands just so she can have health insurance, something is horribly wrong. How can people like John Boehner and Dick Armey seriously argue that we have the greatest health care system in the world when inequities like this are allowed to occur? Certainly, it's the greatest system if you're fortunate enough to have health insurance. If you don't, it's a crap shoot, and from that vantage point our system probably looks a lot like what you might find in a Third World country.
If Congress can enjoy the benefits of the greatest health care technologies known to man, then why can't the rest of us? Or is not feeling the pain of others one of the side effects of government-sponsored health care? (Speaking of "socialized medicine"....)
WE DESERVE BETTER.
