At first, I chose to say nothing about the health care plan in the works on Capitol Hill. I figured I had better not stray outside my area of expertise, especially if I didn't have anything concrete to say on the issue. And as far as the bill's possible effect on me, I'm a student, not to mention still under the age that a parent or caretaker can cover me under his or her plan. I thought I had nothing to lose or gain.
Until, I saw this
article.
In the August 24th & 31st issue of Newsweek, Johnathan Alter wrote a column titled "Health Care as a Civil Right" about the political rhetoric of the health care debates. He noted the prominence of the so-called Screamers, who have paraded through media headlines and broadcasts for weeks as they attack their Senators and Representatives at town halls. Fueled by catchy slogans and false rumors about death squads and mandatory government-interference in their health decisions, these mobs have largely dominated the health care debate - in part because supporters of the health-care plan, whether elected or appointed or grassroots, have failed to provide an equal and opposite vocal response.
As Alter puts it: "[I]t's the Party of Sort-of-Maybe-Yes versus the Party of Hell No!" He speculates that health care supporters have "forgotten the stakes - they've forgotten that this is
the most important civil-rights bill in a generation."*
Passage would end the shameful era in our nation's history when we discriminated against people for no other reason than that they were sick. A decade from now we will look back in wonder that we once lived in a country where half of all personal bankruptcies were caused by illness, where Americans lacked the basic security of knowing that if they lost their jobs they wouldn't have to sell the house to pay for the medical treatments to keep them alive...
Have we somehow forgotten how important this is - or have we just forgotten how to fight for it? Are we really going to sit on our hands and let an ill-informed, insistent mob of squeaky wheels prevent those who really need health care coverage from getting it?
Those of us who are Democrats were without recourse for eight years. Those of us who believe that forming our Constitution's "more perfect union" requires equality of opportunity have been without recourse for much longer. And for as long as we have been a nation, people have been dying because they can't afford to live, have been losing out because they can
only afford to live - all because their fate is left in the hands of those who are just out to "get mine."
If you support health care, if you care whether the uninsured live or die, if you recognize that that could be you one day, then get loud.
Health care is a civil right.
Fight for it.
