Unprecedented Overreach?
For bull-headed grumpiness it's hard to beat divisive ideologies. Even if the purpose of the mission is abundantly clear; that it will benefit the society as a whole, bringing a vital social lifestyle measure into clear focus as measurable to any that exist in all other advanced economies, the linkage between Democrats and Republicans is so emotionally estranged that the most important reform in overhauling American health care remains one-sidedly political.Fourteen months of bickering, remonstrating and livid accusations simply drove the two political parties further and further from any semblance of what might have been non-partisan agreement that the disadvantaged of their country deserved a better future. The health-insurance lifeboat could be extended to include everyone. If the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world could not accomplish at least that, then what true values did it represent as a liberal democracy?
Is it not the duty and the obligation and the need and the wish of every responsible democratic government to ensure that all its people have equal access to the fundamentals of decent opportunities for health assurance? That the spectre of disastrous ill-health hanging over the heads of 32-million Americans (analogous to the entire population of its northern neighbour, which does provide universal health care to its people) might be removed from the current reality of descending health status or financial ruin.
Instead the Republican faction of the political scene threatened in response to the Democratic cajoling. The hard-right Republicans warned of complete fiscal ruin, while the Democrats insisted the initiative could establish itself and be fiscally balanced. Powerful voices were raised in anger and roused political rabble-rousers to damn the very issue of fair health-insurance provisions as a ruinous diversion from more vital items like employment and the economy.
When truth is, employment, the economy and affordable health-insurance are all intertwined; indivisible in their interrelationship and their primary cause and effect. The bogeyman of permitting the elderly to die, of abortion-on-demand becoming a pathologically viral enemy of population growth fed into the national hysteria as polarization of opinion and ideology became ungovernably rampant.
And then, the almost miraculous break-through of an intelligent, principled, bi-racial academic becoming President of the United States occurred and startled the world as much as it did America. And that same determined man made good on his promise to bring universal health-care coverage to his country's people. In memory, perhaps, of his mother who, in her dying days, was forced to do battle with health insurers.
The bitterness that the passage of the legislation has elicited is fairly evident in the promise of no fewer than thirteen States of the Union to take the federal government to court. With the argument of unconstitutionality, forcing Americans to purchase health insurance. The truly alarming thing about this issue is that not one Republican backed this health reform legislation.
The divisive rancour between the two political parties reflects the divisions within the country itself, and the truly absurd thing in all of this is that with the negotiated alterations in the original reform package put together by the Democrats, eager and anxious to get the Republicans on side, the current now-passed reform package fairly well reflects a Republican -assuaged reform.
"We will run on a promise of repeal", according to the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. There, truly, is a house divided. Out of sheer curmudgeonly misery of temperament and affronted sensibilities.
Labels: Health, Human Relations, Human Rights, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, March 24, 2010
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