I get it: you’re afraid. You’re afraid that we’ll all become a nation of reds. A big ol’ group of violent revolution bloodshedists. A Bolshevik, collectivist, laissez-faire-loving, Karl Marx-praising, “my dad makes the same amount of money as your grandpa’s uncle” liberal communist.
But that just isn’t the case.
In 1965, during the height of the Vietnam War, propaganda was perhaps one of the most influential elements persuading Americans that we needed to stand our ground throughout the entire course of the war. Just like the communism debate in the Vietnam era, we are once again having a socialist-based argument within the country: universal healthcare.
It won’t be before I’m dead that I will understand why people are against this. According to a new Harvard Medical School study, somebody in the U.S. dies every 12 minutes because they do not carry health insurance. According to Harvard University study co-author and associate professor of medicine Dr. David Himmelstein, that number, nearly 45,000 people in the U.S. per year, is greater than the number of deaths caused by drunk driving and homicide…combined.
Additionally, researchers say that adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.
Even if you think that this socialist universal healthcare would be horribly detrimental to the nation and our society as a whole, President Obama’s current plan is not a bad alternative. If you like your current insurance you can keep it. There is no more denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions. And you won’t get your coverage dropped when you get sick.
Ah, but it’ll cost too much you say? Okay, I’ll give you that. We Democrats love to spend our money, after all. But if we were able to waste over $688,541,000,000 (as of time of printing) in Iraq, I think we can utilize an extra bit of money, pocket change in relation to the cost of the Iraq War, to cover everybody in the country with health insurance.
I can’t help but wonder that this is getting so much opposition simply because it’s actually helping people for once.
Helping people, my dedicated and wonderfully lovely readers, would be a true success and a true mission accomplished.
In the words of Maya Angelou, “If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.”
Sure, you can argue that universal healthcare is socialist. But it is technically just as socialist as McDonald’s charging everybody the same price for a double cheeseburger. The only difference is if you get a clogged artery from all those burgers, you’ll now be covered.
