Tuesday, January 16, 2007

MLK and Health Care

If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, it's almost certain he'd be talking about health care. The Hartford Courant
I have no idea what MLK would be talking about if he were alive today. Ostensibly, things we be very different if he had been alive for the past four decades.
Maybe with the benefit of Dr. King's leadership the African American community would view discrepancies in health care, income and life expectancy etc. as afflictions of the distant past.
Alas since 1968 a sad string of shake down artists, race baiters and Islamicist Apologists have claimed to speak for Black America. I can only wonder how things might have been with responsible leadership.
If you read the whole Courant story, they cite this example of how our health care system is dire need of universal access:
Martinez, 29, has experienced daily bouts of vomiting and stomach pain since she had stomach-reduction surgery. She was so sick that in August she left a marketing job that offered health insurance. She now earns about $30,000 a year as an administrator for a nonprofit agency that offers no insurance.
Apparently we live in a society that is so callous, that it forces an innocent person to gorge themselves until they require extremely risky elective surgery. Then when the questionable surgery causes problems, that poor innocent person has to leave a good job with health care benefits to work for a caring nonprofit agency that offers no insurance. Maybe that nonprofit agency should be picketed like Wal-Mart.
Being self employed, I am well aware of the inadequacies and expenses of our health care system and I am sure there are horror cases out there where Americans suffered due to lack of proper health care. With that said, Martinez is poor example to point out. She is, however, an excellent example of a poor decision maker who would like help dealing with the consequences of her poor decisions.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Healthier Americans would do far more to reduce soaring health care costs than anything else. Increasing spending on educating people on this fact would as well. The film Barbarian Invasion captures the problems with universal health care very poignantly...