Ironically, many of the people whom the article portrays as fuming over "socialized medicine" probably have state-sponsored health plans. Accordingly, if the protesters actually applied their anti-government rhetoric to their own lives, many of them would lose health insurance coverage or would have to spend a fortune to obtain it.
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I know that people say getting the government involved will mean bureaucracy and lack of choice--but that's what we have now, and the motivation of the people running the businesses--not the health care workers--is profit, not making people well.
ReplyDeleteI could live with the current system if it meant that everyone was covered--but that's not the case.
Also, it makes me wonder what all the anger is really about, what the fear is.
Nancy
I agree with your last sentence...what is the real issue here? I read an op-ed that argued there might be some anti-Obama / anti-non-white-president sentiment here from middle America, and they want this issues to fail. Who knows, I sure don't, but the lack of education, class, and restraint is quite scary.
ReplyDeleteI realize that privatizing everything is a bad, bad idea, and socialism as a whole/ singular approach to running a country can cause a ton of problems... but in some instances the self-focus, greed/market based approach doesn't work on it's own. I think health care and education are two of those things. In the end we all need to look after those around us and make sure everyone has access to health care.
ReplyDeleteI live in Canada and we have a public health care system. Everyone pays in via their taxes, and we all get basically equal access to care. Are there wait times? Sure, and it's not perfect by any means. But everyone can get life saving treatments. No bill afterwards. The waiting times are often for non-critical things like knee surgeries, as well as for things like transplants which are at the mercy of the availability of organ donations.
I live in one of the cities that is supposed to have the worst wait times, and yet I have received all my tests, my prescriptions, and my surgery all with no or minimal waits.
Private healthcare is really not evil ppl. Not perfect... but not evil.
If there is ANYTHING I want my tax money to be spent on, it's education and healthcare.
Just my humble opinion. :)
Thanks for joining in the conversation, Bright Side - I appreciate the Canadian perspective!
ReplyDeleteI think now, in our privatized system, we are fundamentally forgetting what healthcare should be about...care, instead of profits. Our healthcare (and education!!) are ballooning in cost - way past that of inflation, and even for those with insurance, it's so scary.
I guess we'll see what happens down here! ;-)
Quick Question: how is the Canadian media covering what's going on here in the States?
Hm. I think the Canadian media is just watching with interest. There's a bit of a laugh each time we see the Canadian system pointed to by the American anti-Obama media as something to be avoided. We all kind of know our system isn't perfect but it's pretty darn good.
ReplyDeletePersonally I don't know if this is the right time for Obama to be pushing a trillion (?) dollar initiative. Isn't America already broke? How about he gets you guys out of Iraq first, and THEN with that savings, tackle health care. I don't know.
I'm still waiting to see what he does about the environment.
It's kind of like watching a soap opera. ;)