To Oppose Health-Care Reform is to Wish Me Dead
I’m sick, and I’m never getting better, which means it’s impossible to turn a profit from me. In some states, health insurance companies won’t cover people with diabetes. But in New York state, there is something called a “diabetic mandate,” which requires health insurance companies to cover those with diabetes. Again, luck has saved me.
But plenty of people in my situation aren’t so lucky. They don’t have health insurance, or they live in states without such a mandate. I’m not happy to be so lucky; I’m furious that others in America, people the same as me, are struggling to afford the chance at a basic quality of life others take for granted—and through no fault of their own. Whatsoever you do to the least of the diabetics, that you do unto me.
Opponents of meaningful healthcare reform who frame it in terms of theory fail to understand how for so many of us, healthcare is personal, a literal matter of life and death—our own lives and deaths, or those of the people we care about most. Underlying philosophical precepts have no bearing on clear moral choices. You don’t let someone die to prove the point you were trying to make.
That said, I’m also inclined to agree that compelling Americans to buy health insurance seems unconstitutional. I also understand that without such a mandate, other facets of Obamacare—like forbidding health insurance companies from refusing to cover those suffering from “pre-exisiting conditions”—would be untenable, probably driving health insurance companies to raise their rates to levels even more unreasonable than they already are.
The problem in America isn’t that millions of us lack health insurance. It’s that any of us have health insurance at all. Health insurance itself is the problem—the for-profit casino-modeled system that lets people go bankrupt, to live sickly, and to die in order to maximize gain for shareholders and executives. Meaningful reform won’t mean giving more people more health insurance. It’ll mean giving everyone access to health care—especially the people who need it most.
Follow Henry Stewart on Twitter @henrycstewart