I heard a rumor that there’s a debate going on about health care in our country. Something about should there be coverage for everyone…. Something like that, anyway.
I, for one, am all for health care for everyone. I think that if I didn’t have coverage and I got sick, I shouldn’t have to sell my house to pay the bills or forgo health care all together and die because it was too expensive. Do I think that the government should run health care? Maybe. Maybe not. Who do I think should run it? I don’t know that either. Do I think that the plan on the table is the best possible plan? Probably not but what is the best possible plan? And honestly, I don’t know enough about the current plan to argue, or discuss, it in detail. And I’m certainly not alone in that.
But that’s the thing, most people don’t know enough about how insurance or Medicare work now to know what they’re getting anyway. Most people don’t know that because of government intervention, employers offer health insurance. Some people don’t even know that the government runs Medicare. And again, is Medicare perfect? No. Is my Aetna run PPO perfect? No. I’m grateful to be insured. Our bills from the hospital for Courtney’s birth were $20,000 – and that was just her bill. That had nothing to do with my bill. I would have had to have her at home, in the pool, if it weren’t for the insurance.
Back to the point of my blather today… Here’s where I think things are getting out of hand. As you may or may not know, town hall meetings are being conducted all over the country. Our elected leaders are meeting with “the people” to talk about health care. Even the President ran a town hall meeting. I think that’s all excellent. And as an American, we’re all entitled to free speech. Excellent. Feel free to paint your signs for or against health care, cry from the rooftops, write about it on the Internet. That’s all well and good. But to compare health care and our elected leaders to Nazi’s and Hitler? For real? And it hasn’t just happened once, it’s happened several times – Atlanta, New Hampshire and Colorado, to name a few. Six million people died in the Holocaust. They were brutally murdered, tortured, enslaved. Families were torn apart, obliterated, murdered in front of one another. It was unspeakable. How can we possibly compare what the government is trying to do to Nazi’s? It makes me sick to my stomach. Completely sick.
I don’t know your politics but I can certainly agree with you here. Intelligent debate is great… really great! Violence, bullying and jockeying to say the worst possible things about someone just to garner air time does not constitute intelligent debate.
I think there are a lot of people who, medically speaking, have led very sheltered lives and don’t have a clue about how it really works now. I recently had to take a bloodied/ bruised/ broken friend to the ER. As we waited in the lobby for several hours (yep, you read that right) I thought “here is your socialized medicine… in the most expensive place possible in terms of money and human toll”. Not that it matters but my friend had good health insurance. She still had to wait behind the people who needed treatments for bad colds because the ER is the only place that will see them.
I don’t know what the solution is, either, but I know the current model isn’t perfect and needs to be improved. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
It’s sad that the entire debate seems to be about who makes the most noise, says the most offensive thing or has the most inappropriate sign. What’s wrong with intelligent debate? It’s so frustrating!