EXCERPT:If we ask: how do the U.S. and Europe compare? It’s simple: US healthcare costs us twice as much per person as Europe’s systems, and we get worse care. While France ranks #1 in the world for quality of health care, we rank number #37.
What do Europeans know that we don’t? How can Europe get better care for half the cost, but we're stuck in a stalemate where most of us face dwindling coverage and rising costs, and 46 million of us have no coverage at all? If Europe can get it right, why can't America?
I agree entirely with your issues regarding why Catholics need to support health care reform. I would add one more that may seem at right angles to your comments: The health care reform issue has been a convenient straw man for an earthquake of anger that has been festering in many who voted against a black man for president of the US. There is a racist mistrust that is very evident in statements about Obama "taking over the country." The degree of vehemence I have observed in televised examples of the "debate" is not, in my opinion, generated by simple disagreement, misunderstanding or moral zeal. There is real hate there. The presence of a man in the anti-change crowd at the Portsmouth, NH rally with a "legal" gun strapped to his leg is poignant. He stated that the firearm was "symbolic" when the police asked him to stand in the open so they could keep an eye on him. I suggest the use of the firearm as a "symbol" in this situation is hard to misinterpret. You might want to add a point that Catholics cannot support a movement that has racist roots.
ReplyDeleteI suspect you're right that racism drives some protestors. I also suspect that many of them fear a creeping “socialism” that will, as one Fox news analyst said, “Turn America into France.” This finds root in the baseless belief that the market always works and the government never does, even though none of our troops, veterans, federal employees, or elderly would trade in the “socialized” medicine they enjoy for a private plan. It amounts to a blind idolizing of free enterprise that tolerates and even defends massive injustice just to protect the myth of a bygone, perfect, white, unbridled capitalist and “Christian” America that never existed.
ReplyDelete