This morning, I rode my bike downtown to the bank. (exercise – healthy!) After depositing my check, I decided to stop for breakfast at the Main Street Cafe. For any readers unfamiliar with Kalamazoo, Main Street is a wonderful little breakfast and lunch joint. I don’t know if the waitress knows my name, but she calls me “honey” and always remembers what I order.
I am a creature of habits: gyro and feta omelet with a pot of coffee and a large orange juice. (cholesterol, hypertension – unhealthy! bad!) Afterward, I smoke a cigarette and read a book for a while. (lung cancer – unhealthy! bad!)
Following breakfast, I ride my bike back to my apartment (good!), which smells vaguely of stale beer. I threw a bit of a party last night. (liver disease – bad!)
As a very general rule, college students (myself included) are not the healthiest of individuals. We drink and smoke and stay up all night stressing about term papers. Fortunately for us, most of us remain dependents of our parents, and retain our insurance benefits, so long as we are enrolled as full-time students. If I keel over from lung cancer or liver disease or get hit by a truck while riding my bike (irony – good!), I will be provided with excellent, state-of-the-art healthcare.
I am sure by now everyone can tell where this article is going, eh?
Most people are not college students. Many of these people have absolutely no health coverage whatsoever.
To me, the much-publicized Healthcare Brawl 2009 seems like a bit of a no-brainer. People can’t afford cancer treatment, you
Also, Soylent Green is Grandma
say? Golly, we should probably get on that!
Of course, this is not the case.
This excellent article by Nicholas D. Kristof led me to a rather disturbing statistic. According to the National Academy of Sciences, more people die every year thanks to lack of health insurance than were killed in the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda doesn’t have shit on the inefficiencies of the American healthcare system.
We threw hundreds of billions of dollars worth of missiles and fighter jets and bullets at Al-Qaeda for their actions. I wonder what we’re doing about the 18,000 annual deaths a year caused by our own inefficiency.
The media is completely fixated on the hysterics of the right wing fringe which, it seems, is too busy worrying that Obama wants to grind up Grandma and turn her into cat food. They have yet to contribute anything constructive to the debate. Those that aren’t obsessing over “death panels” are busy arming themselves to the teeth. If there’s one thing the far right does well, it’s death fetishism.
This is not to say that the Democrats are blameless. Despite overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Congress, they have so far proved unwilling (I hope not unable) to pass a bill over the heads of a rowdy, but largely hapless Republican minority.
In the meantime, 50 more people will die today because they lack any form of health coverage. In a year’s time, I will graduate from college and join the teeming ranks of the American uninsured.
Frankly, I am terrified at the depths of our inefficiency.
the majority of the uninsured are so because they choose to be. They feel they are healthy enough and health insurance is not a priority for them. You can’t make rational decisions based on emotions. We all feel bad for poor sick old Grandma Ruth but telling her sob story isn’t grounds for overhauling a successful system. If you feel so bad for those poor helpless people, start a non profit that provides free healthcare. We need organizations like that for the small minority that needs it. Not an overhaul of a system that works for most people.
I am very interested in seeing some reliable sources to back up your claim that the uninsured constitute a “small minority” (a highly subjective choice of phrase in the first place).
Regardless of how small this minority may be, I find your lack of compassion deeply disturbing. However, I doubt that any argument I present will teach you to feel for others. I imagine it’s a moot point.
Perhaps a practical analogy will help.
You buy a bicycle. It’s a hell of a bike: 10 speeds, fancy streamers and a cute, little bell so you can harass the homeless standing in line outside the free clinic.
This bike works perfectly a total of 90% of the time. However, the other 10% of the time, the front wheel falls off, flinging your body into whatever object happens to be in front of you. Perhaps it is a brick wall or an ice cream truck.
Of course, 10% is a small minority. So you probably wouldn’t have to worry about fixing your bike.
Also, your comment about my spelling errors (since deleted by you or a friendly admin) is shockingly petty, especially coming from a woman who does not appear to have been taught the existence of such things as “capitalizing the first letter of a sentence” or “sentence fragments” (or caring for the less fortunate, but I digress).
Have a lovely day. Try not to fall ill anytime in the next six years.