When you are born into this world…you have nothing. Immediately you are taken into the care of your parents who, as part of our society’s values, are responsible and will look after you until either you leave to live your own life (or they kick you out). You still have your parents and family to fall back on but once you are an adult, your care is yours to manage. Relationships, careers, expenses, it’s yours. All that freedom you complained about not having as a budding young person is now yours for the taking. You can succeed or you can fail and in your early years you will do a little bit of both. If all goes well you will build great relationships, successful careers, and amass a fortune to retire and live out your days enjoying the spoils of your hard work, living like a child (doing whatever you want), and spoiling your kids and/or grand kids rotten.
How does Health Care tie in to this perfect life? Well, there are two types of health care: regular and life threatening. Regular health care is the normal day to day cold, allergies, broken arm kind of stuff. Annoying and can be a set back but you will live to see another day. Life threatening, well that’s stuff like strokes, cancer, and other terminal or life changing diseases or ailments. Life threatening is the only type of health care that matters because if you cannot get it, you are dead. There is no tomorrow, there is nothing except the afterlife (assuming of course that you believe).
Health Care is expensive. Like REALLY expensive. Unless you are rich or lucky enough to have health insurance you or someone in your immediate family run the risk of dying due to not having the opportunity to get adequate treatment. Do you get it now? Well for many the answer is no. There is a great divide in America between the haves and the have nots which has been blurred and hidden by the media and marketing. America’s economy is sustained by its people’s willingness in spending money which today in 2010 is made up of 60% working and lower class workers. That is people making $32,000 or less. A spend economy. Add into that spend lifestyle the cost of family and living and even with a multiple income household the incoming money barely makes the ends meet.
But Why? Because rich people like being rich. There is a gap between doing the right thing and doing what is right for the fortunate few. America spent 2.5 Trillion or about 8K per person (including kids) just in health care last year. That’s around $650 a month that either you or together with your employer pays an insurance company. America is letting greed win. Half of all bankruptcies in the United Stated of America are due to health care financial burden. This fact is disputed but it is easy to see that spending $200,000 dollars treating cancer (give or take a couple hundred thousand dollars) can break the bank. Remember over half of America is under $32,000 and is spending everything they earn to keep the American economy and way of life going!
Ask yourself:
- What is the right thing to do?
- What is the moral thing to do?
- Should Health Care be a right in America?
When faced with the possibility of death, we would do anything to escape it. People that are not as fortunate, who have limited resources, face this grim reality. If you take care of yourself and are lucky, you will live a long and healthy life. Otherwise you will sacrifice your dignity, your savings, and ultimately your life trying to get the same care others take for granted. Not deadbeats or people scamming the system but people who pay their bills, who have done their part to better society, and have prayed to god only to face the unfortunately reality that it literally takes money to ‘live’ in America.
Health Care should be a right that all Americans have and enjoy. It is the right thing, it is the moral thing, and it is the humane thing to do. Dying because you just didn’t have the money to live is just not the American way.
Look up ‘Social Class in the United States‘, ‘Health Care in the United States‘, and ‘Tax Rates around the World‘ to read more about the economic gap, our Health Care efforts, and what other countries pay in taxes versus the services they receive.