Guaranteed Healthcare

The following is my most recent guest column about universal health care in our local newspaper, the Newberg Graphic. It is really a rebuttal of a letter the previous week which had derided my earlier call for universal health care for this nation:

"In taking issue with my guest column about universal health care, Mr. Donald Hall of Newberg seemed only to confirm my point, namely that propaganda being put out by the corporatists and the medical and pharmaceutical industries (just like the propaganda of the oil companies) has managed to successfully brainwash much of America. As long as these industries continue their lopsided, unfair, and I submit, unethical financial windfalls at the expense of the middle class, all Americans will continue to suffer.

"Choosing to ignore the Iraq occupation, as Mr. Hall did, is understandable in that this continuing action is indefensible. Oddly, Hall instead finds more abhorrent than the cost of a lies-based war the cost of providing universal health care of all Americans. Really? We've all heard the figures in the news: The Iraq occupation is GOBBLING UP ALMOST $10 BILLION A MONTH. By all realistic estimates, the Iraq occupation will cost over $3 TRILLION before all is done and said.

"The lives and national reputation lost in Iraq are tragic enough, but let's put the dollar cost into perspective -- One trillions dollars is what would be consumed if you spent $1,000 EVERY SECOND FOR TWO THOUSAND YEARS. Do you wonder why our economy is in shambles? (It is bad enough that here is an action perpetrated in our name to commit the unlawful invasion of a sovereign nation based on criminal acts, lies, altered intel, an outed CIA agent, torture and more.)

"BUT IN DOLLARS, THINK OF WHAT THOSE WASTED DOLLARS COULD PROVIDE AND REMEMBER THAT THE IRAQ OCCUPATION IS GOING TO COST US AND FUTURE GENERATIONS 3 TRILLION DOLLARS -- PLUS INTEREST. AND THIS ESTIMATE DOES NOT INCLUDE THE COST OF CARING FOR THE VETERANS WHO FOUGHT THERE OR THE COST OF REBUILDING OUR MILITARY AND REPLACING LOST AND DESTROYED EQUIPMENT. THINK ABOUT THIS.

"Using the VA Health System (proclaimed the "Best Health Care System in the Nation" by TIME magazine in the fall of 2006) as a "model" for universal health care for all Americans does not mean to "copy as is." Rather, it means we take the core best-of and not wasting time and money reinventing the wheel. In attacking the call for a prevention-based, health care system for everyone in this country, Mr. Hall claims such a program would be just another "huge government program costing we the people our freedom and more tax money." (Regarding how we pay for universal health care, please refer again to the previous two paragraphs.)

"Take away our freedom? I wonder what Mr. Hall calls the present system where a well-financed, and much more sinister and diabolical market force has morphed into a greed-based fraud machine consuming honest wages of middle-class families and harming the less fortunate through neglect? This is not capitalism. It is theft and amoral miserliness in the present, assuredly, but outright robbery and neglect even more from the future.

"Never again do I want to hear the excuse that there is not enough money for some worthy cause which benefits the greater good when we can find the money for the most ill-conceived and lethal actions (Iraq), and we can locate this money in haste, without application of wisdom or careful yet timely judgment, nor with any provision for oversight considerations. "Never again do I want to hear of our American "liberal," altruistic humanism twisted into some naive giveaway of tax dollars. Liberalism is, to paraphrase Jose Ortega Gasset, the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities, and hence, it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded on this planet. It announces our determination to share existence with the weak and less fortunate.

"And please Mr. Hall, refrain from misappropriating the meaning of my family name. Some distant ancestor known not even to me, perhaps either a pardoned thief, or someone just glad to be an indentured servant no more, or maybe even a freed slave, took up this mantle that is my last name. But I see my last name not so much as a label as a declaration -- What else? A Free-Man. Perhaps that first Freeman swore to never again be subjugated, not in any fashion nor by any one, to be robbed of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- not by dishonest weak-kneed politicians, not by whatever unscrupulous corporatists were called back then, nor by dogmatic religionists claiming to know the fate of his soul.

"Here's the thing: We have a real opportunity, you and me, to shed hate and fear and negativism of those who frown and growl, as Mr. Hall seems to, "no we can't," for those who proclaim just the opposite. Cervantes said it better than I: "The phoenix of hope, can wing her way through desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and arise."

"Right now, there is a call for change in thought and action in our land to recapture purloined rights and insist on moral business practices which benefit the greater good. Let us embrace this call, and our liberalism too -- our humanity -- with humility and gratitude for all the gifts shared with us by our Creator, and intended to be shared by us with ALL those ill or in need.