CSotD: Patience, Patients
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Clay Bennett (CTFP) starts us off today with a cartoon that is problematic on a couple of levels.
The main issue is the one he intends, which is that the current fury over health insurance companies is overwhelming the spirit of Christmas. No argument there.
But there’s another issue in that “good will toward men” is a mistranslation. Though we say “peace on earth, good will toward men,” the actual text is better rendered as “on earth peace among those with whom (God) is pleased,” often given as “to men of good will.”
The Nativity story is folklore, not history, but folklore contains important cultural lessons, and there’s a significant argument that the insurers do not qualify as “men of good will” to whom the angels wished peace.
However Jesus got his start on this planet, as an adult Matthew records his attitude towards those who do not please God:
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
Lee Judge addresses the murder of the health insurance executive not by justifying the act but by pointing out why so many people exhibit sympathy with the madman and anger with the industry.
To continue the sermonette a bit further, note that the only time in the New Testament that Jesus lost his temper and became violent was when he witnessed greed.
And while Christmas turns our thoughts to Christian doctrine, the principle of caring for the less fortunate is a pillar of every major religion and a mark of human decency even among atheists.
But Pat Bagley points out that the incoming administration and its adherents in Congress aim to strip people of the protection of the Affordable Care Act. They claim to have something better, but Trump said that in his first administration and never released the plan he pretended to have. Now he says he has a “concept of a plan” but, again, declines to reveal it.
Another empty promise. He said he would release his income tax reports, but didn’t, and he campaigned on a promise to lower grocery prices, which he now says he can’t do.
I’ll admit to having a dog in this fight, because I had an odd, minor symptom which I wouldn’t have taken to the doctor if I would have had to pay for the visit on my own. That was how my cancer was diagnosed, and the oncologist said I’d have been dead in six months had it not been spotted.
How many people have needlessly died because their states declined to extend ACA subsidies to everyone, and how many will die if the act is replaced or discarded entirely?
How many have died because a health insurance company stood between them and the treatment they needed?
Ann Telnaes reposted this 2017 piece on her Substack. I remembered it instantly and was glad to see her put it back in play, but I was also sorry that it remains relevant.
It reminded me that Jen Sorensen had also created a long-form piece on the topic, an open letter to the Supreme Court that Kaiser Health ran on their website in 2012:
How many people have died in the intervening dozen years?
How many have declared bankruptcy because they couldn’t keep up with the cost of necessary treatments? This article not only names health costs as the #1 cause of bankruptcy in America but notes that people run up debt on high-interest credit cards and take out second mortgages in order to pay for health care.
It’s not fair and it’s not right. And it raises the question of why we need private companies to stand between doctors and patients in the first place?
I dug around a little more and found a large collection of cartoons on the topic posted nearly a quarter century ago by Physicians for a National Health Program, including this one by Chan Lowe about the long wait for reform.
I won’t repost all the cartoons on that site, but you should go have a look, because there are some excellent pieces there, and they include a mix of liberal and conservative cartoonists, as they should.
Health care should not be a partisan issue, but it quickly became one, with corporate shills and political quislings spreading lies about “Obamacare” and “death panels” and launching court fights over mandates and partisan efforts to water down whatever couldn’t be blocked.
Here’s a look at the world’s systems, explained more fully in this Wikipedia article. It’s not as simple as saying everybody but us has complete universal free healthcare, but if you look at the yellow countries, it is as simple as saying we can be judged by the company we keep.
And for all the complaints and heartbreaking stories that have emerged over the past two weeks, we’ve also heard from Americans who had an accident or sickness overseas and were stunned to find that their treatment did not include a bill.
Jeff Stahler (AMS) speaks for a lot of people when he has this fellow declare that the problem is very real, even if we can’t justify the crime that has brought it to national attention.
Unfortunately, David Cohen may also be right. If we had reacted meaningfully to Columbine in 1999, there might not have been a Sandy Hook, and if we’d reacted to Sandy Hook, there might not have been a Uvalde. And yet school shootings persist, despite all our thoughts and prayers and flowers and teddy bears.
I’ve never been comfortable with making John Brown a hero, and his violence in Kansas was matched by pro-slavery terrorists in a horror that made slavery even more front-and-center in American politics than it had been.
But if Bloody Kansas and Harpers Ferry focused America on finally dealing with the issue, it makes me wonder what will get us to act on health care.
While African-Americans waited for abolition, they embraced the story of a man, betrayed, beaten, chained and blinded, who pulled down the temple to destroy his tormentors at the cost of his own life.
How long, Lord? O how long?
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