Advertisement
As I slog through the debate, no, the debacle on Universal Health Care; As I watch while fellow Americans water down, no, piss on this most noble notion of our nation's history, my emotions evolve from shock, to sadness, to trying (without success) to tune out.
While the damned wars may be justified, however wrongly, with some misguided and misinformed altruism, there is nothing to misconstrue as moral ground in opposing Universal Health Care.
Good people can be fooled into supporting wars. Happens all the time. But people who oppose Universal Health Care just plain suck. They're usually the ones who happen to have healthcare for themselves and their families. But as their jobs disappear - and with it their insurance - they change their tune right quick.
Most opponents cite government incompetence or high cost as reasons to deny health care to all Americans. But beneath the cost and controversy lies an incontrovertable truth:
More Americans would remain alive in a United States with Universal Health Care.
Less Americans would die.
Thus, arguing against this landmark legislation of life and liberty is both treasonous and treacherous. And threatening to the republic.
Why? Because every preventable death among the 50,000,000 uninsured - and among the millions more under-insured - is a contribution to our country that will never have been made. Likewise with every treatable condition left untreated among those ranks: More Americans kept from achieving their maximum contribution to country and community.
Every human being is valuable resource, and every so often spectacularly so. Who knows if the current system's inadequate reach killed off a cancer curer or a peace maker or a poverty ender? What we know for sure is this current system, denied to a sixth of our people, means at any given moment only five sixths of preventable deaths and treatable conditions can actually be prevented and treated. The value of the couldabeens falling through the cracks is, of course, incalculable but is roughly one sixth of what is.
Meanwhile, the WELL care component of Universal Health Care - timely access to strategies and therapies before conditions become catastrophic - would further reduce unnecessary death and disability and its corresponding reduction of human productivity.
Don't just imagine no more genius grad students dying because they couldn't afford to get their abscessed tooth looked at before it infected their brains. Dare to imagine no more genius grad students dying because they had access to well care all along and the abscess never happened. So they lived happily ever after and found the cure for AIDS. Or swine flu. Or hate.
Maybe it's time we progressives ramp up the rhetoric ourselves on this defining issue of our times: You oppose health care for all Americans? You're a fucking anti-American. You support it, you're pro-American and thank you.
You're either with us or you're with the terrorists.
While the damned wars may be justified, however wrongly, with some misguided and misinformed altruism, there is nothing to misconstrue as moral ground in opposing Universal Health Care.
Good people can be fooled into supporting wars. Happens all the time. But people who oppose Universal Health Care just plain suck. They're usually the ones who happen to have healthcare for themselves and their families. But as their jobs disappear - and with it their insurance - they change their tune right quick.
Most opponents cite government incompetence or high cost as reasons to deny health care to all Americans. But beneath the cost and controversy lies an incontrovertable truth:
More Americans would remain alive in a United States with Universal Health Care.
Less Americans would die.
Thus, arguing against this landmark legislation of life and liberty is both treasonous and treacherous. And threatening to the republic.
Why? Because every preventable death among the 50,000,000 uninsured - and among the millions more under-insured - is a contribution to our country that will never have been made. Likewise with every treatable condition left untreated among those ranks: More Americans kept from achieving their maximum contribution to country and community.
Every human being is valuable resource, and every so often spectacularly so. Who knows if the current system's inadequate reach killed off a cancer curer or a peace maker or a poverty ender? What we know for sure is this current system, denied to a sixth of our people, means at any given moment only five sixths of preventable deaths and treatable conditions can actually be prevented and treated. The value of the couldabeens falling through the cracks is, of course, incalculable but is roughly one sixth of what is.
Meanwhile, the WELL care component of Universal Health Care - timely access to strategies and therapies before conditions become catastrophic - would further reduce unnecessary death and disability and its corresponding reduction of human productivity.
Don't just imagine no more genius grad students dying because they couldn't afford to get their abscessed tooth looked at before it infected their brains. Dare to imagine no more genius grad students dying because they had access to well care all along and the abscess never happened. So they lived happily ever after and found the cure for AIDS. Or swine flu. Or hate.
Maybe it's time we progressives ramp up the rhetoric ourselves on this defining issue of our times: You oppose health care for all Americans? You're a fucking anti-American. You support it, you're pro-American and thank you.
You're either with us or you're with the terrorists.