Health care now, war later

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

By Grace Hammond

If you had to choose between two presidential candidates, one who would certainly end the war in Iraq or one who would certainly implement universal health care, which one would you pick?

That is the question I’ve been asking people at the Brew Pub, the Halloween party, and in my old South Dakota and Ohio stomping grounds. I don’t claim that my approach is scientific, but I have been getting an interesting sense of my generation’s priorities.

Universal health care was the clear winner. Almost all of the people I spoke to prioritized it as a more urgent and immediate need than ending the war. And these are not pro-war individuals. (One person opposed universal health care entirely and all of them supported a concrete end-date for the war.)

The rationale for prioritizing health care was this: “I don’t think we’re ready to leave Iraq quite yet – that is going to take time, and I think we’re finally headed in that direction – but I need affordable health care today and it looks like it’s a long time coming.”

Over and over again, I heard this statement: “I will vote for whoever I think will best enable me to afford health care.”

The phrase “socialized medicine” has been oft-used as a boogeyman by politicians. They bluster, “We can’t have the government in charge of our health care!” Well, we have big businesses in charge of our health care, and it’s not working out. Universal health care doesn’t shift power away from doctors and health professionals – that power was taken away by insurance companies long ago. When people in my generation hear “socialized medicine,” the “medicine” part is the one we really notice.

One of the saddest, most depressing events over the last eight years was the SCHIP veto. I am mystified by the rhetoric of “compassionate” conservatism that places abstract principles – “But the bill is pork!” “It would help ‘illegals!’” – above something as straight-forward and concrete as a sick child. What does it take to enable real, human compassion above stubborn attachment to abstract ideals?

We wax emotional about abortion - Where is the show of emotion and support for children outside the womb? Why don’t we support their mothers, so they can afford to give birth to and raise children at all? And there’s the billion dollar question: why can we fund a war and not our children’s or their parents’ health?

An article in Slate titled “Who’s Afraid of Socialized Medicine?” points out that one good thing may have come from the SCHIP veto: Perhaps Republicans have thrown the first and most important stone in a battle this nation so desperately needs to wage for universal health care.
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Health care now, war later | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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