Wait wait, that's not funny

[urbpan]

It must be hard for Peter Sagal to maintain a neutral yet funny tone about the health care debate, when someone he loves is and going broke while suffering from cancer because of the American system. Frankly I don't know how anyone reasonable can oppose reforming the system. Yup, it's going to cost money. That's kind of the point, the U.S. is a rich country, it can afford to provide health care for all its citizens--we already pay more than all the other rich countries, and we don't even have universal health care.

What Sagal is asking for, that lots of people chip in a little so his friend's very expensive treatments are covered, hints at the only way health care reform can work. Everyone must be taxed a little more, so that everyone, including poor people and self-employed people and UNemployed people, EVERYONE can get adequate health care. Again, why anyone is against this, why a "single-payer" (socialist) system is thought to be somehow un-American, is completely beyond me.

Edited to Add: I can remember going to countless benefit rock and roll shows, like the one for Brian Wright of Slughog, where somehow a bunch of underemployed rock fans paying twelve bucks a pop were going to defray the cost of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. This should be the content of the health care debate: should sick people rely on charity to receive the treatment they need? What is this, the 18th century?

Comments

[weofodthignen]

. . . not to mention that we all suffer when people who couldn't afford vaccination, or can't afford treatment, spread diseases around. that we all pay for other people in a more expensive and more divisive way when we have jobs with health insurance. "Lose weight, you're driving my premiums up" is far more likely to be thought or even said when you're in a pool of 30 people. that we all suffer when people who don't like their job cling onto it for the insurance, and when people on welfare don't dare get a job because they'll lose the coverage for their kids. that we all suffer when babies are born disabled due to lack of access to prenatal care. . . . even those of us who don't notice that the US has a Third World level of infant mortality. that we all suffer paying the highest rates for medicines and Emergency Room treatment that the market will bear, inflated by all those insurance companies with deep pockets as well as by all those uninsured who have no other choice. And that's leaving out the fact that most of us know someone who can't get treatment. Or know someone who lost a friend or relative who died unnecessarily.

Public health is cheaper and more efficient, as well as more humane.

M