What gets lost
too often in all the rhetoric about health care is that if tens of millions of
people lose their health insurance tens of thousands of people will die from
preventable deaths. I’m going to write that in a separate line.
Tens of
thousands of people will die from preventable deaths.
Plain and
simple: the Affordable Care Act (ACA) saved lives, tens of thousands of lives.
People who could obtained health insurance and started getting basic needs
taken care of along with treatment. Cancers and heart disease were caught in
early more treatable stages along with a host of other treatable illnesses.
People with preexisting conditions could and did get treatment. In my family
the ACA saved a family member’s life TWICE.
Think that’s
too big or too small a number? Then how many people, men, women and children do
you think will die with the repeal of the ACA?
The questions
we should be asking are:
- Why there are only 3 or 4 Republicans in the Senate who (partially) oppose taking away health insurance from those who can’t afford it otherwise? (Senator McCain is only objecting that proper procedures weren’t followed in condemning people to death.)
- Why are the majority of Republican leadership okay with condemning thousands of people to die?
- Why are evangelical “Christians” okay with condemning tens of thousands of believers and non-believers to die? (Keep in mind that this is the same group that champions the right of the unborn to life. [Just not so much after they’re born.])
- Why so many people are already fixated on the number that I’m using as to how many people will die?
- Why was the House of Representatives able to pass legislation condemning people to certain death so easily?
- Why after all these years don’t Republicans have a viable plan to fix health care with a plan that doesn’t sentence so many people to death?
- Why does Republican leadership want to replace a bill that needs fixing with another bill that they acknowledge needs fixing rather than fixing the bill that already exists?
- Is it more abhorrent for a terrorist to kill or injure hundreds than for elected officials in suits to kill tens of thousands by making healthcare insurance unattainable?
- Is it easier to cause the deaths of tens of thousands of people when their names aren’t yet known?
Wanting to
live seems to be a fundamental desire for most people. For various reasons too
many people who have health care insurance want to deny it to those who don’t
have it. That would be the poor and people who just don’t have enough money to
purchase health insurance. So the poor and less fortunate die. Some of the more
fortunate are sad that that happens. I can’t really in good conscience say that
“all” of the more fortunate are sad, because they aren’t. I’ve heard too many
people say that’s good enough for them, that’s the way it is, tough.
Too many of
the Republican leadership and Party were unhappy with millions of people being
able to obtain health insurance because of the actions of a Democratic Black
President.
They have
fought against health care for the less fortunate every step of the way and
along with the help of evangelicals, white supremacists, Russians and
unfortunately a majority of voting white people who elected a clueless man that
said he would fix it with something better. They (and he) didn’t have anything
better. They only had proposals that made it look like they were doing
something but in reality were taking it away. They are slowly strangling the
ACA through non-support as well.
This can be
fixed. It may not sound as patriotic as taking a knee or saluting but health
care can be provided to millions more Americans at a reasonable cost. Congress and
the current administration will have to put petty divisions behind them and
people first. Our elected officials can first stop trying to kill the ACA (For those
that still might not know it, Obamacare is the Republican nickname for the
Affordable Care Act) and then immediately start fixing it in ways that are
positive for the American people and bring more people under the umbrella of being
covered. They may have to make enemies of wealthy health care CEOs and
pharmaceutical executives but they will survive – along with the tens of
thousands of lives that will be saved.
As a society we are justifiably outraged when
hundreds die or are injured. We should be just as outraged when tens of
thousands of innocent people are sentenced to die preventable deaths through
inaction. We should be outraged at those responsible.