Have You Been to Europe Recently?

Yesterday, on NPR, I listened to another in the interminable interviews on the current Health Care debate. NPR was interviewing two Republican Congresspersons. I believe they were from Pennsylvania.

The final arguement of one of the Congresspersons against the current Health Care initiative supported by the President was that it intended to make us into European style countries. This, evidently would be something to loathe.

As only about 11% of Americans have passports, I am assuming that the Congressperson imagined that this arguement would hold water because people really have never experienced Europe and only have right wing radio commentators to inform them about life in Europe.

That the current health care reform could make us more like Europe would be something to be hoped for. The mainstay European countries - France, Germany, England, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austira, Switzerland, Netherlands all enjoy a quality of life, a style of living that is equal to ours, plus many have national health care systems that provide health care services to all citizens. In addition, all enjoy levels of freedom and choice equal or greater than our own.

So, what is the arguement? It is the same "fear" arguement that is always employed with positive change is proposed. To create fear, it is necessary to misrepresent not only the truth. So, there is a persistent campaign in the United States by some sectors to paint Europe as "socialist". It is it, then there is an arguement for Socialism. The Quality of Life, the per capita income, the degree of freedom is excellent in Europe: again, equal to or greater than our own.

In fact, what the current Health Care initiative is threatening to do is to ask the American People to live up to its own best reviews as a nation that cares. The primary purpose of the current legislative initiative is to extend health care insurance (and, therefore, health care itself) to the 45 million Americans who do not have it.

European countries have elections that alternatelly put left/center and then right/center and even further to the right governments in place. But, all of these governments agree that to deisturb the social system that provides health care to the majority of citizens would be to take step back from the quality of care and caring that exempifies the Western world.

We have yet to live up to the high level of social consciousness that the European societies exhibit.

he opponents of health care reform are inviting the nation to take the low road, to give in the worst of human tendencies to covet what we have and not care about what others need. We deserve better than this. If we wanted to live in an advanced society, that new how to care for all its citizens, we would have to move to Europe.

Health Care: Defining Moment for our Nation

It is entirely predictable that the Congressional break and the ensuing series of town hall meetings that have been in the news recently would provide opportunity for all the right wing fanatics to turn out in numbers to protest the fact that the country rejected their ideas, ideals and ideology in the last presidentlal election. This rejection of the fear based politics of the right wing and the accompanying meanness that is characteristic of their thinking was a wonderful and hopeful moment for the country.

But one election does not a nation define. The current debate over health care is a defining moment for our country. It would be the depth of shame and a moment of extreme sadness to allow the meanness of the right to define our national life, our national values and our way of life.

The ability or inability of the nation to pass and support comprehensive health care reform which gives every citizen access to good health care will define our nation for decaces to come. Either we are a nation with a soul that has matured to a new level of understanding of the need to pursue the common good or we are a nation whose soul has died, victim of the me-first, let them eat cake, Ayn Rand hatred of humanity’s highest values in favor of darwinian social systems.

There is a historic opportunity to rescue the nation from becoming a first class example of a rich nation that sold its birthright to a handful of mean ideologues who took over the air waves. It is time for the real silent majority – those who have some remaining sense of the moral obligation to create a society in which all have access to the basic needs of life – to stand up and be counted.

What is clear is that we cannot trust the Republicans even to dismiss or denounce the extreme element of their constituency who spread lies and hatred as part of the national debate over the most essential of all questions for a nation with extreme wealth.

There is one overriding concern in health care reform: making health care affordable for the 45 million Americans who do not have access to health insurance. If the private sector could have solved this national embarressment, it would have already. The government needs to ensure this access by offering a tax-based support for affordable health care insurance. There is no private sector effort that can solve it, first and foremost because the private sector does not care to solve it, has no interest in solving it and can see no profit in solving it.

The cost for health care for every one, versus, for instance, the cost of wars which have only endangered our national future and deepened our national debt, is minimal and the refusal to take an action to resolve the most essential issue for human well being because of this minimal cost will define the nation as one that has lost its soul for decades to come.

It is time that the nation stand up to the right wing, Republican meanness that has kept us captive and slowly killed the soul of the nation and pass comprehensive health care reform that extends real access to quality health care to all our citizens. Anything less is unacceptable for a nation whose soul rests upon the idea that we are all created equal and that democracy is the best political system to provide for the common good.