Sick to My Stomach
Well, it was nice for awhile to believe that the U.S. could muster enough decency to ensure that every citizen had access to health care. And that our country was going to stop kowtowing to drug and insurance companies.
But that’s over, thanks to the voters of Massachusetts, who elected a guy that makes Mitt Romney look like Abe Lincoln. I respect the fact that they voted, but I cannot help but think that some of them voted for fear instead of hope (right out of the GOP playbook). The irony is that they, too, are without jobs and health care and have children who go to bed hungrier than they should. So when they will wonder what happens when they get sick, and a job doesn’t materialize, even after six months of looking, I would like to fill them in:
They’ll die. Maybe not right away, but sooner than they should. Because there is no Plan B here. There never was. Ask Scott Brown. He’ll mumble something about fixing the broken system and then go about the business of lining his pockets with campaign dollars from the health care lobby.
And those emergency rooms that the less-fortunate Republican voters use as their primary care physicians are falling apart from overcrowding, too, and now there will be no money to fix them. That’s over. As are affordable drugs for seniors like my mom, and maybe yours as well.
But I’m sure that they took all of this into consideration when they decided to “send Washington a message.” That idiot Brown called it a “shot heard ’round the world.” The only problem is that the gun was in the voters’ mouths and they didn’t even know it.
I realize now that we will never have true universal health coverage in the richest nation on earth. Because if Obama couldn’t do it, we might as well give up on it and go back to the game of haves and have-nots, that we seem to play so well.
This isn’t an ideological issue; it’s one of morality. I can’t help but think that we are better than this. Sadly, one of those moments that would fundamentally change the way the country treats its own has been scuttled by ignorance. And I have to tell you: I feel sick about it.
Thankfully, I have health insurance so if I feel worse tomorrow I can see a doctor. Which is more than I can say for some voters in Massachusetts.
maybe people should take personal responsibility for their own health, health care is business, there isn’t really any care there.
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And us Irish complain about having to wait a couple hours in A&E, pay €100 and get all the treatment you need. Oh how we like to whine!
While I agree with much of what you said, I think it\’s important to note that the voters of Mass all have health insurance. Yes, they have socialized medicine, and they pay for it. Not a big suprise they don\’t find it necessary to elect someone who will guarantee it for the rest of us. Us rednecks down in Texas that is, with the strongest economy in this recession, and the highest percentage of uninsured. Democracy.