The disease would have to be utterly horrific for some of the listed side-effects. on these "treatments"...
Bottom line is this - we need to have a fundamental shift (STILL) on exactly what "Health care" means and whether or not people truly believe it is a human right or a privilege of the fortunate. We cannot "fix" health care until we acknowledge what it really is and whether or not it is a fundamental American Right or not.
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
When I grew up, my 6th grade teacher was also my state senator in Indiana. He would be gone from classes when the Senate was in session, but he was our classroom teacher when the senate was in recess, but one of the things he did for us was have us recite the Preamble to the Constitution instead of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Universal healthcare as a RIGHT in implied throughout the Preamble from establishing a more perfect union (ie. MAKING THINGS BETTER AND NOT SETTLING FOR THE WAY THINGS ARE) to securing the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity (the only way for there to BE a posterity is to ensure they are healthy enough to survive and thrive and reproduce to propagate the familial bloodlines.
The Declaration of Independence likewise touches on rights that cannot be secured WITHOUT the fundamental right to healthcare - LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. Dead, unhappy slaves have no rights. Wage slaves and those in indentured servitude for medical debts have no rights. They also have no hope and no happiness to pursue.
For our founding documents to retain meaning in the 21st century, this country must rededicate itself to its organizing principles and basic foundational constructs.
"...form a more perfect union..."
"...promote the general welfare..."
"...ensure domestic tranquility..."
"We hold these truths to be self-evident.....life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."
Those phrases were carefully constructed and chosen with purpose by the founding fathers, imperfect men who had a vision of something better and something worth dying for to birth onto the world stage. We have to take up that mantle and turn away from "getting things done" that don't move the needle or serve those most noble aspirations.
We have to turn away from reality TV, from crass communication and course interaction, from ignorance and fear and hate.
We have to internalize what it means to be American and why healthcare as a right and not as a privilege (or easy way) out is so much a part of that discussion.
America is not a country and NEVER was....America is an idea, a concept, a challenge to the world and to all of us who call ourselves "American". It is a worldview and philosophy that says nothing at all about capitalism or socialism (but at its heart rejects tyranny and fascism) but urges all to seek and earn freedom and self-determination. Without one, no one can have the other...but in our current world, in our current incarnation of the American Dream, we abide one without the other daily. We allow the system to continue to deny basic human rights to 20M+ "Americans" every day still.
The poor man or woman making $9 an hour and trying to support themself or their family is not self-determinate or free in any meaningful sense. They are wage slaves and systemically excluded from what it always has meant to be an "American". People know this too...all across the country and in every political party or philosophy too...the ones who cry that they "want their country back" know this, and feel it, but lack the words to describe it without visceral anger and a rallying point or reflexive slogans that lash out and look exclusionary and out of touch.
America is an idea that challenges men and women of all ages to stretch beyond the now, beyond the status quo, beyond the horizons and beckons us to create that more perfect union, that mythical shining city that some envision, that destination that never arrives. America is mile 25 of a marathon. It's the bottom of the ninth inning in a playoff game tied 1-1; it's extra time at nil-nil in a Cup Final or a 3rd over-time in the Stanley Cup finals, but it's never "sudden death".
The beauty of America and the utter genius at its core is that is an idea and that makes it different than any other nation on Earth past or present. Ideas can be attacked, they can be disputed, they can be momentarily co-opted and misused, they can even be suppressed; but they can never be defeated.
It is NEVER too late for America to transform itself and come back from the brink. All it takes is the will power to make it happen and the desire to keep getting up, to keep being knocked down and slammed and told that something is "impossible", "illogical", "fairy-tale"...
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