I've been obsessing over the miserable non-debate on health care, dominated by the noise of the crazies and the deliberate liars and propagandists, and finally was driven to...
...yeah, really, I did. Finished a complete descent into fuddy-duddyism: wrote to the president.
Well, they make it really easy at whitehouse.gov. And here's what I said. Frustrated speech-writer that I am, I even told him what to say.
President Obama,
As a nerd myself I generally admire your cool, thoughtful approach to issues. However, that coolness is not serving you well, and not serving the country well, in the intense health care battle.
Your opponents have seized the emotional high ground with strong, gut-level rhetoric and images. Oh, most of their arguments are spurious—and the people who intentionally disseminate rumors like the "euthanasia of the elderly" notion are simply despicable—but they are being effective and, more important, are dominating the discussion, driving out rationality.
Please, sir, it is essential you begin to show heart, emotion, and commitment in your public statements. You need to drive the health-care issue back into the realm of morals, family, and patriotism.
Forgive my presumption in putting words in your mouth, but this is the kind of thing I think you need to be saying, to get on top of this debate once more:
"This is not merely an economic issue.
This is not merely a political issue.
Health care for Americans is a moral issue.
Access to basic health care is essential to maintaining your basic human dignity in the face of adversity.
To deny that access to someone because their employer laid them off is to say, you don't have work so you don't count as a human being.
A system that denies that access to a child because its parents are poor, is a system that says, poor kids have no value as future citizens.
It is simply wrong that in America, anyone should be forced to choose between buying medicine and buying food.
It is simply wrong that in America, any parent should ever be forced to choose between paying the rent, and taking their child for a routine visit to a pediatrician.
It is simply wrong that in America, infant mortality is worse than in forty-four other nations. (CIA World Factbook)
Let me break that down for you.
A newborn infant delivered in Sweden, or in the Czech Republic, or in Greece, or in forty other countries including even, I kid you not, in Cuba,
that baby is more likely to live to be 1 year old than is an American newborn.
American babies die in their first year almost three times as often as newborns in Sweden or Japan.
Now, is that because American parents love their babies less? Of course not!
Is it because American pediatricians are less skilled? Of course not!
I believe that the greatest part of that difference is due to one simple cause:
That there is a significant number of parents in this nation who have to think twice, have to agonize about whether they can afford to see their doctors for prenatal checkups, whether they can afford to bring their children to clinics for routine checkups,
And when a child gets sick, they have to agonize over what other basic budget item they will have to cut back on—rent, food, clothes?—before they can afford to take a sick child to a doctor.
And too often they are forced by the cruel economics of health care to wait, and agonize, and pray a sick child won't get worse, and finally take the baby to the emergency room of the hospital because that's the only place they can afford to go. Our emergency room people are skilled and caring, but this is not the right way to deal with infant illnesses.
This is one big reason why in these United States, three times as many newborns don't live to see that first cake with the candle on it, as in some other countries.
Is that the America you know?
I think I live in an America that has always been able to accomplish what it needed to do—in style, with class, and spirit, and efficiency. Isn't that the America you know?
I know that we Americans can build a health care system that truly is the world's best—
and one that ensures proper basic care of every citizen,
and we can do with with style, with class, with spirit, and efficiency.
And I say that anyone who says this isn't possible, isn't practical, isn't sensible—they are simply slandering America..."
Yup, that's what I told him. If there's any response, I'll post it here.
