Main Street

Regular Human Beings’ Lives

What DougJ at Balloon Juice said:

I agree that CBO scores are important and should be discussed. And I understand why politicians’ futures are always a subject of discussion in DC. But can there be any discussion of regular human beings’ lives here? I know that everyone who appears on tv or writes for a national paper has a good health care plan already. But don’t they ever wonder what it’s like for other people they pass on the street, for the people who serve them coffee or wait their tables?

I realize that if you’re poor in this country, then everything is your fault. If you take out a loan you shouldn’t have taken out, it’s proof that you’re too much of an idiot to handle money, whereas when rich people are fleeced by Bernie Madoff it’s proof that Madoff is a super-genius monster. If you’re hit by a stray bullet, you were probably in a gang. If you’re sick, it’s because you smoke and you’re overweight. And whatever trouble you have getting a job, it’s all because of your genetically determined low IQ. And if you weren’t poor, overweight, genetically deficient and so on you wouldn’t have trouble getting disqualified because of preconditions and you’d never get scammed by bogus insurance outfits.

But still, even in a society that accepts these myths, shouldn’t there be some concern about 45 million Americans without health insurance?

And I guess I’d ask you this: the politicians and pundits who stand by and watch millions of lives destroyed by our health care system—are they any better than the people who watched that horrible crime in Richmond? I think you know the answer.

I’d add to what Doug says, though. Because even if you don’t care about 45 million people without health insurance, what about the millions who have it but are vulnerable to losing it, or to being denied coverage because their insurance company doesn’t want to pay, or to going bankrupt from the bills their insurance won’t pay even though they did everything “right” even according to the “blame the poor” system? That’s the level of standing by we see in some politicians and pundits.

Tags: health care reform