Our right to Health Care

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Normally, I just talk about gaming, World of Warcraft to be exact. But today I feel the need to discuss something that's got me quite disturbed. I am going to reveal a few biases here so try to look past those and find the message buried deep in my ranting.

There's alot of talk about "Obama's Health Care plan" and that talk just ain't good folks. You see, we Americans we have this weird, weird sense of pride when it comes to our backwardness. We are the only first world country in the world without socialized medicine and we somehow take pride in that. But the truth is going to shock you, my fellow Americans. Oh yes it will.

You see, we like to make fun of France with their 35 hour work week ( which translates into 22 more days off each year ) and eight weeks of vacation, yes eight weeks, because we pride ourselves on the American work ethic. It's that hard work that put us on top of the world after all. But where does that work get us? We die younger than the French, and we have a lower quality of life. After all, we work nearly three months out of the year more than they do. Imagine that, folks. Imagine having three months a year to do whatever you wanted, instead of reporting to work. Instead of running the race, relaxing at home or the beach. In our part of the world, having three jobs to make ends meet is looked at with pride by our former President. But I ask you, should it be? Instead of American spirit in that, I see tragedy.

Our parents and grandparents worked hard to give us all a better life. It's the American way, isn't it? They worked to put us in college, to be sure we got good paying jobs, to be sure our lives we're just a little if not significantly better than theirs. So I ask you, is your life really better?

When I was a younger man, my grandfather got sick. My grandmother had never driven a car, so I stayed in their spare room and drove them places when they needed it. I mowed their lawn, I did the work around their home that they were unable to do. It was a great arrangement for me actually, because it wasn't until that time period, my early twenties, that I got a real sense of family and a sense of what the past had been.

They're both gone now, my grandmother passed just this last year. When going through some of her old papers, we found the original deed of sale for their house. They paid just $18,000 dollars for their home. I stared stunned at the price. Cars are more expensive now. Of course forty years had come and gone since they bought that house but I realized I was living in a house with almost the exact same square footage as their. I had the same number of bedrooms, I was in the same spot as they were. But, my mortgage was nearly twice the percentage of my monthly income as their. And my wife worked outside the home, unlike my grandmother who worked in the home. Like myself, they had a nice television, but the airwaves were free. No cable bill for them. there was no internet to pay for and the cost of food was a considerably lower percentage of their income as well. Today, my wife and I can't even consider her staying home to take care of our house and kids. We absolutely need her income.


Years ago, my grandfather and I had a discussion about ratios. I had paid way too much for a shirt, because of my own vanity. He scolded me for it. But I asked him, "how much did a nice shirt cost in your day?"
"Oh, about 5 dollars," He replied.
"And how much did you bring home a week?" I asked.
"Thirteen dollars a week," He said.
"Well, I bring home $150 a week and the shirt cost me fifty," I explained," So really, if you think about ratios, I paid less for this shirt than you paid for yours back then."

He smiled at me and accepted my logic. But, that logic falls apart just 20 years later, in a world with internet, IPhones and Wi-Fi access. It falls apart when the ratios become skewed out of the favor of the consumer. The percentage of my income spent on keeping up with the Jones has nearly tripled. The American debt has gone through the roof and our good jobs that our parents and grandparents worked so hard to be sure we were ready for are being outsourced overseas.

Now, we can talk about our American pride all we want but the truth is shocking. The whole "We are #1" mentality is an illusion. No, it's a lie. America is no longer #1 in anything. The truth is we are not number one in health care. We aren't even in the top five. Those spots in 2007 were held by: Japan, France, Iceland, Sweden and Cuba. Can you guess what all of those countries have in common? That's right, socialized medicine.

The word socialized scares many American's. We tend to think of Communism when we think of socialization. And Communism has been our enemy for so long that it's hard to get beyond it. And rightly so, Communism is as Totalitarian as Fascism. America was founded on the principles of freedom after all and Socialism is a restriction of those freedoms in the eyes of a great many.

But I ask you, if we as people of America have the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, then what exactly does that mean? Let's face facts, The Pursuit of Happiness is a rather grey area. It means many things to many people. Liberty is easy. It means freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom from wrongful imprisonment, freedom! But the first thing our Founding Fathers listed was Life. Life! We have the right to live. Under our current system, in 2007, nearly 46 million Americans under the age of 65 were without health care coverage. Only 62% of American workers were covered. That's almost four out of ten working Americans without access to affordable health care in a country that claims to be the best place on Earth to live. Four out of ten working American did not have access to the Life that our Founding Fathers saw as the most important human right.

Today, President Obama and his Democrat cohorts are presenting the American public with a health care system that is flawed certainly, but aims to cover more Americans than ever before. The opposition is of course the Health care industry which desperately needs for the American system to go unchanged. The health care industry spends one million dollars a day on lobbyists and political contributions. Why? What could warrant that? 2.5 trillion dollars are spent each year on health care. The health care system is addicted to American money.

2,974 people died in the September 11th attacks. It is considered the worst American tragedy of all time. Yet, According to the Institute of Medicine, "lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States." That's three 9/11's every single year. And there's a debate over this? The next time someone argues against a national health care system, ask them instead if they could prevent 9/11, would they? Ask them if they could prevent three 9/11's a year, would they? How could anyone say no to that?

If our first inalienable right is our right to Life, then how can it be denied through a lack of health insurance? How can a country based on freedom imprison it's people in a financial cage that can only end their life? If America is ever going to be the best place on Earth to live then shouldn't we as Americans be alive to enjoy it? Isn't it time that our lives were better than our parents and grandparents? Isn't it time to fulfill the America Dream?




Sources:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/27/60II/main704571.shtml
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2005/090205threejobs.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8191.htm
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4025
http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/weekinreview/14abelson.html
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Healthcare-Profits-vs-Pe-by-John-Basel-090716-385.html
http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/checkup/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks