Letters to the Editor

To the editor:

Having at one point in my life spent nearly a decade living in England, I have a first-hand contribution to make to the current health-care debate. The recipient of a foundation grant that covered my living expenses and tuition, I first traveled to London as a student. Consequently, I had little money and no official status that might have entitled me to the benefits of the English single-payer health-care system.

Nevertheless, when I became seriously ill with a disease that mimicked the symptoms of cancer, I had no difficulty finding a physician who, though baffled by my ailment, was generous with both his time and his fees, eventually making routine house calls and steering me in the direction of a specialist.

Ultimately, I was referred to Dr. Bernardo, the scion of a famous family of British physicians dating back to the Victorian era. When he suggested that I needed emergency treatment, I asked this illustrious physician what the bill would likely amount to. Blanching at his reply, I mumbled half jokingly that I would prefer to die – at which point he laughed, patted me on the shoulder reassuringly and added, “Don’t worry. We’ll get you in under National Health.” He did, and after some weeks on a regime of medication that would have cost a small fortune in this country (but which cost me the equivalent of about $50) I checked out of Queen Mary, Roehampton to recuperate and marvel at my good fortune.

The point of this personal anecdote is to refute the preposterous allegations being leveled at town hall meetings in order to thwart President Barack Obama’s attempt to secure modest but meaningful health care reform. Our present greed-now-grief-later system is an international disgrace. It threatens to bankrupt our economy, sending millions of our fellow citizens into a downward spiral of debt, anxiety and increased risk of serious illness. I know from personal experience that England’s government-run health care system is effective, efficient and beneficial.

To those who contend that there is no constitutional warrant for such a system, my response is that they should read the document they claim to revere. In its very first paragraph it assigns to the federal government the essential tasks of 1. providing for the common defense, and 2. promoting the general welfare. The political right, always eager pay for bombs, is outraged at the prospect of paying for pills, i.e., endorsing a government-run health-care program designed to promote a more perfect union, justice, domestic tranquility and the common welfare (to cite the precise language of the Constitution). I, for one, would be delighted to know that some of my tax dollars were contributing to the “general welfare” and not just contributing to the generals at the Pentagon. It is time America joined the rest of the international community in recognizing government-provided health care as a basic human right, not a usurpation of power.

The alleged socialist/fascist takeover so feared by the right is a perfect example of a psychological concept taught in my Gothic imagination course (“denial and projection”). It is the rabble-rousing paranoia of those shouting down reason and sporting assault weapons in the public square who subvert the Constitution. Their actions betray a thinly veiled attraction to authoritarian tactics of the sort once favored by both fascists and communists.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 11 2009. Filed under Letters to the Editor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry