I attended one funeral Saturday and am going to another one next Wednesday of people who had no insurance. Both were poor and Black. That’s why Ruth Marcus, in her column today in the Washington Post (“Score One for Skepticism”), can say she would vote against the health care bill, she doesn’t thing she has a stake in it.
For her, the world of uninsured people is something she reads about. I doubt if even one of her circule is uninsured and goes to the County or to ERs for health care, usually too late to prevent the ravages of disease and injury. Ah! I just thought; she “knows” her gardener and I’ll bet he’s not covered.
So she uses the fact that the CBO’s projections are not fact to shoot down the obvious, that univeral health care will bring down the overall cost of health care and a lot of cost elsewhere. Kids who go to school instead of staying home sick or to tend sick siblings; workers who show up at work ready to produce; people who are less likely to turn to alcohol, drugs, and comfort food b/c they feel bad; people more likely to exercise and prevent numerous health problems; all these effects and more come with better health care.
Pundits like Marcus simply have no experience of the effects of poor health care in a large society. She may have some vague idea there’s a waitress in the coffee shop she stops in at who has no health coverage, but she doesn’t feel it. Remember when Clinton said, “I feel your pain”? Why did that resonate, considering we use it as a joke now? B/c people feel abandoned and Clinton was throwing them a life line. And he did try.
Then you have the sad truth that many people truly do not care. They may have it fixed up in their minds that people suffering for lack of health care “brought it on themselves”, but deep down, they truly do not care.
So in the final analysis, we have greed, an uncaring mentality, and willful ignorance of others’ sufferings. And Marcus is in that crowd as is everyone else opposing health care.