Skip to main content

Health is a Common Cause

I have a boat and a lawn mower.
The lawn mower is used, but I absolutely need one.
The boat is fairly new. I built it myself. It is optional.

Nobody really gives a damn whether I have a boat, or not.
They really do care that I mow my lawn because,
if I don't, the neighborhood starts to go to hell,
and if that happens, their well-being is at stake.

In our Declaration of Independence, we affirm that there is
a kind of equality among us, that we have certain unquestionable rights,
among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In the Preamble to the Constitution of our nation, we state that
we intend to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility, provide for a common defense,
promote the general welfare of all of us, and secure liberty.

Life. Liberty. A chance for happiness. A common cause. Justice.
A peaceful life. A secure life. Our general well-being. Freedom.

That is what we say our nation is about.
Whether I have a boat or not is optional,
but maintaining the neighborhood is a common cause.

As a nation, we maintain a system of defense,
and police and fire departments. Those aren't options.
They are things we need to do together, or we won't have
what they provide. We provide a system of Courts to insure justice.
We know that our common well-being, and our personal fulfillment,
requires a system in which people can be educated.
We have public schools and universities. We are allowed
to experiment with alternative ways of education, but that
everyone who can be educated is educated, is not an option.

What we have not figured out is that we all need health care.
It is not an option if we are going to stay alive, have a chance
for happiness and security, and participate in the general welfare.

If the swine flu, or WD-40, or whatever it is now called in order not to
humiliate swine, starts to kill people, we all know that our personal health
is tied to other people's health. We don't just say, "Tough!",
because it might kill the rest of us. If our kids are malnourished
and poorly educated, we know that our common welfare is at stake.

But we have a health care system which costs us more
than any other health care system in the world, which is outperformed
by the systems of most other developed nations, as measured by
almost any objective standard one can find, including child mortality,
life expectancy, and availability. We don't get it!

To tell the truth, our schools are not good enough, either.
Measured against other leading nations, we are dismal but,
at least now and then, we recognize that our common well-being,
our chance for a good life, is at stake. We do, at least,
pay lip service to demanding that everyone be educated.
But when it concerns health care, we chicken out!

We let kids die. We let their teeth rot. We let the poor,
who cannot afford to pay a thousand dollars a month
for private health insurance live and die with their diseases.
When it get really bad, we tell them to go to the emergency room,
where it costs the rest of us incredibly more than it would cost
to provide ongoing care, and that does not fix the situation.
It only means a third of the nation gets last-minute emergency
care for what generally is a rotten health condition.

And it is horribly expensive to do it that way!
It makes no sense whatsoever! None!
Because we are short-sighted we punish all of us!

Health care is as essential to our general well-being as education,
as police and fire departments, as a defense system,
as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Build a boat if you want to. Or buy one. Who cares?
But you owe it to your neighbors to mow the lawn.
And we owe each other a chance for good health.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames.  We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves.  For instance, some  people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old.  Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old.   That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together.  But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer.  It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more