The Affordable Health Care Debate - Two Perspectives

I suspect very few people really know what fear is until they either have a family member who is critically ill or they themselves are ill. Making that situation unbearable is no access to affordable health care or the fear of wondering how one will ever be able to provide this service of human dignity. In many regards, health care serves the common good much more so than other public services such as police, water service, public parks, access to education or whatever.

We can debate the best method of making affordable health care available to Americans. Personal responsibility is important but then there are millions of Americans that are personally responsible yet either do not subsist on a living wage or cannot find employment to be responsible. This is a dynamic which is almost completely avoidable and a direct result of failed government policy. Policy of Washington elitists.

We should have a substantial health care debate based on merit and reason. But, today we don't have that. Instead what we have are those who are generally uninformed yet believe they have all of the answers they need, ie government mandates and those who will use fear and terror to push an ideological agenda against any kind of reform.

I thought the comparisons here were rather interesting. One is from a citizen suffering a life-threatening illness. A citizen most of us know well. And, another is a politician who has spent his life on the payroll of special interests. Special interests which seek to destroy many of the social programs our society has come to expect. As an example, Social Security.

How do we define ourselves as a society? Do we in fact define ourselves as how we treat the least amongst us? As a society, we have paid trillions of dollars over the last decade or so to people who have decimated our society and threatened our social programs under the guise of individual liberty. In a society which can afford to pay a small group of people trillions of dollars for adding little value to society, do we decide to offer people a living wage? Or access to affordable health care? What could be more democratic than to remove any fear of ever wondering if you are able to provide a basic human dignity to your family? Every family?