Do you deserve to die?

[Michael Collins]

The Forgotten Question in the Health Care Debate

Rationed care. Image

Do you deserve to die?

Do your friends and family?

Michael Collins

Scenario 1: You've just been diagnosed with a cancer of the lymphatic system. You're told that it requires a procedure within the next two weeks. Unfortunately, you were laid off from your corporate job 11 months, 30 days ago. You are on your last day of COBRA. Your company retirement and savings are all gone. You can't afford the $1,200 a month premium needed to continue your coverage. Without the operation, you will die. Do you deserve to die?

Scenario 2: Your spouse has a long history of illness. Then you discover she has a virulent infection that, if untreated, threatens to disable her to the point where she's immobile and requires 'round the clock medical care. You work for yourself. While you have catastrophic health insurance, it doesn't cover the needed treatment nor does it provide for nursing care. Does your wife deserve to experience this untreated sickness and suffering until her premature death?

Do you or your family members deserve to die simply because the rulers of this country can't get their act together to provide universal health care?

Do your friends and neighbors deserve the same fate?

What's the meaning of a nation based on a common bond when other citizens, those we don't know and will never meet, face the same grim end to their lives?

Others Determine Our Suffering and Death

We hear talk about health care rationing but one theme is missing from that dialog. Some of you who are the subjects of rationing will certainly suffer and some will clearly die well before your time as a result of health care denied.

Public health care rationing is a term that needs to be changed. Rationing is a conscious choice. Policy makers, legislators, and those who hold this view are saying that it is necessary to deliberately deny citizens health care because there "isn't enough money." These people need to be honest and stop hiding behind abstract terms. It's not rationing. It is mandated suffering and death guaranteed by those who support the current system or future systems that deny care for those in need.

Health care rationing is based on the assumption that we don't have enough dollars to provide for open access to health care by all citizens. But wait! Didn't we have enough dollars just recently to give $4 trillion to failed Wall Street financial institutions? That's now part of our deficit. We will have to pay it back. Yet we're told that we don't have enough dollars for a truly comprehensive universal health care system. We're also told that the health care system that we do end up with cannot, under any circumstances, add to the national debt.

Let's see now, we can't afford to ease suffering and save lives across the board and whatever we do short of that can't incur any debt. But we've just seen a bipartisan commitment of $4 trillion (plus another $8.6 trillion set aside) to bailout banks and save bank executive jobs but we can't do the same to save your life or that of your friends, family and fellow citizens.

Here's another example of distorted thinking and priorities. It is a conscious choice.

The proposed defense budget for 2010 is $664 billion dollars. A large portion will be spent on the Iraq and Afghan wars "defending" us by creating even more enemies than we ever had in that part of the world. But it's a matter of priorities. In order to defend us, the rulers require that we sacrifice our well being and lives at home to pay for that defense.

The Culture of Rationed Death

This is what's called a crisis in values.

The culture of rationed death prevails over the fundamental decency and humanity of caring for the sick.

Those aligned against universal health care consciously choose to impose their culture of death on the entirety of the population.

Who speaks for those of us who will end up without health care?

Which major figures on either side of the debate address universal health care as a life or death issue?

Who among the advocates of rationing are without health insurance?

Who among them are unable to afford or obtain their own critical care or the same for their loved ones?

Who among them will step forward and tell those denied medical care:

"You deserve to die."

END

Special thanks to Kathlyn Stone for her very helpful comments.

This article may be reproduced in part or whole with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

[Mouse]

Although it is in the process of being destroyed by privatisation, the British National Health Service has kept this body and soul together in various ways despite my lack of funds.
Only last month I had minor surgery and swift treatment without needing to pay, and even lifts to and from the hospital, courtesy of a local voluntary organisation. I am also not required to pay for medicine, because my income is small.
I'm so sorry, am I making you jealous?

There has been much about living in Britain that is very civilised. It was a very beautiful ethos of public service that I learnt here as a child.

That very altruism so despised by our agents of destruction. May kindness and good sense be more powerful.

[Mouse]

Sorry. It 's not possible to tell it how it is. really.

I'll give you a clue.

see.

[Michael Collins]

All right Mouse, you've got me. I'm jealous;) but not resentful. In fact, way to go. You chose well!

[waldopaper]

I had a conversation with the Doc yesterday... pro that he is, he was luring me into talking about me "health" issues... but that was not interesting. I wanted to know what HE thought of all this "healthcare" shit.

Long story short-- we both agreed that the "insurance industry" was the turd in the punchbowl. I went a step further... "nationalize" the "insurance industry." O' course... Marxian that I am turning out to be... I want to "nationalize" every place where the porkies have their snouts in the swill... which is generally everywhere.

That gets into Mark's "free-and-fair-elections" which is a black box to me. I can't imagine any other "solution" other than going back 100 years with paper ballots and people counting them with their little weenie fingers while watching each other verrrrrry closely. The "market" COULD do it... if the table weren't tilted... and the game weren't rigged. But it is.

So what is it... "rationed" by bureaucrats... or pay-or-die? Is THAT the ONLY choice? Everybody (well-- at least the "libertarians") likes to use the "government-as-Bureau-of-Motor-Vehicles metaphor. Where I live, the closest BMV outlet is in a hole-in-the-wall nobody knows about (over)-staffed by BMV lifers who get sent there as a peaceful reward for dealing with the downtown hornets'-nest.

It's faster and easier to get your paperwork done there than it is to get a correct order at your average Mickey-Dee's (I'm guessing on that one... I haven't eaten any McD's glop for at least 20 years-- it gives me the "bad ass"). I am on the opposite end of the people who want to "privatize" everything that isn't nailed down. I want to "nationalize" everything that is run by anybody making more than $100k a year.

I think $1k-a-week is enough, thank-you-very-much, when most of the fucking PLANET gets less that that over the course of a fucking YEAR... for doing work that would KILL most of us wheat-folk.

Did I mention that I was a commie-pinko-godless-bomb-throwing Anarchist?