Well, I may have settled on my candidate for President early in this election cycle. Susie Flynn seems like a perfect candidate for America today. She is straightforward and simple in her message, any nation that can find money to wage a war can find money to provide health insurance to all its children! Let the corporations commence to whine (along with the politicians they have purchased), I'll take the truth of simple logic.
Here are the facts (provided by the Children's Defense Fund:
- More than nine million children in the United States—one in nine—have no health insurance coverage.
- Every 46 seconds, another baby is born uninsured.
- It costs less to provide health insurance coverage to children than to any other group of people.
- The majority of uninsured children live in two-parent households and almost 90 percent live in families where at least one parent works.
- Increases in private health insurance costs are dramatically outpacing increases in wages.
- Ensuring that children have timely, affordable access to health care is a smart economic move. For instance, enrolling uninsured children in health coverage significantly reduces hospitalizations for preventable illnesses.
- Uninsured children are more than five times as likely as insured children to have gone more than two years without a doctor visit.
- What the United States spends on health care per person is more than twice the average spent in industrialized countries, yet we rank near the bottom among those nations in infant mortality rates.
- Existing health care programs for low-income children vary widely, with different standards for eligibility, cost sharing, and benefits in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
- Americans over 65 have access to health coverage under the Medicare program regardless of income, but children have no such guarantee, leaving millions of needy children without timely access to critical health and mental health services.
Oh, but Susie isn't old enough to run for President you say? Where does it say that? In the constitution that also guarantees the right of habeas corpus to all? Which is more important, that when a person is held by the government that he or she is charged with a crime and given a fair trial by a jury of peers, or that the president be at least 35 years old? Susie, and all the children, get my vote.
And this is just a start. Our health care delivery system is and will remain immoral as long as profit enters into it. It is time for a change...vote Susie!
And this is just a start. Our health care delivery system is and will remain immoral as long as profit enters into it. It is time for a change...vote Susie!
Susie undoubtedly has quite a future before her! Our nation would be better off with more young people so involved with the issues that confront us. She will, however, need to understand that somebody has to pay for the health coverage she seeks. I know that many families (including mine) with health coverage can just about pay for theirs let alone somebody else's. There are churches that have stepped forward and offer some very basic health care services for free to anyone that needs them. There is a Methodist church in Worcester that does so. Perhaps that is something the Christian community at large should emulate
ReplyDeleteIn regards, the individuals held without a trial, I assume you refer to the detainees at Guantanamo. Our laws protect the rights of American citizens to a trial; they do not protect non-citizens. I am unaware of any other nations that protect the civil rights of non-citizens. If you know of any, it would be fascinating to learn of them.
The money to pay for health care for all can and should come from the money being wasted in Iraq. More than enough there to pay for a well-run health care delivery system for all here.
ReplyDeleteAnd it took the Supreme Court telling this administration that at least the one American in Gitmo had the right to charges and a trial before they considered this basic right. Even if you can make the case that the other detainees are "enemy combatants" (how exactly were some of them "picked up on the battlefield"?) they still would be protected by the Geneva Conventions if this administration didn't consider them "quaint" and easily ignored.
These are grand issues of charity and justice that we should not allow to be nitpicked and smokescreened away. Our nation can do better.
As Christians I'm not sure it ourjob to care what country someone comes from. If a Cuban swims to Miami and is found alive on the beach, it would be my job, as a representative of Christ, to care for that person. I would not put him on a raft and send him back.
ReplyDeleteI find that the church cannot model a health care plan (corporately speaking) unless we call got on the same page. That means protestants and Catholics working together. That means liberal and conservative joining hands. It could be done. or we could skim a little from the war Ian spoke of, or any other wasteful government endeavor. Our nation can do better and it will.
Also, I am so blessed to have good insurance with my company. My daughter actually went to the doctor today and there was just the co-pay we had to worry about. There was a time when I didn't have any health insurance, and supposedly we made too much money for Mass Health. We are such a decadent, stuffed culture. We gorge and purge and waste as we go. If you have good insurance, count your blessings. And pray for those who do not.
ReplyDelete"And this is just a start. Our health care delivery system is and will remain immoral as long as profit enters into it. It is time for a change...vote Susie!"
ReplyDeleteAmen. There is something wrong with a coubtry that can't prioritize. I know I'm a capatalist, but I do think our capatalism could produce a more compassionate way to deliver the health care that should be a given at this point. Nobody in the America should be uninsured.