Health Uncared

In the United States, government-assisted health care for all ages has been centuries in the making. In a mystifying act of governance, our forefathers deemed it important to insure free education for their citizens, but not medical care. Excuse me sires, but if one is sick, injured or severely disabled, one can't go to school. Or work. Or take care of the ones in the beginning and the others at the end.

Why didn't anyone figure this out when our government was cobbled together? Maybe G. Washington, T. Jefferson,  J. Adams and other power brokers had a terrible fear of leeches, bloodletting, or hack saws, thus avoiding the subject by the sin of omission.

Now that we have anesthesia and antibiotics, it would have been logical for a smart Congressman or woman to vote for free universal health care, at least by the end of the 19th or 20th century. As it stands now, Obamacare resembles a Lego construction executed by a spatially challenged five year old, or 64 year old for that matter. Because...

...health insurance conglomerates such as Blue Shield are hell bent on keeping their huge profits, despite the newly passed universal health care bill. In California, state-of the-art hospitals will be considered "out of network," and only a small roster of doctors will be considered "in network" and be reimbursed at reduced fees.

The right-wing, a.k.a. the highjacked moderate Republican Party fears that government-funded healthcare would make us a socialist country, and we all know that God is anti-socialist and for sure a virulent anti-communist. So while neo-Nero's fiddle as southern states burn and northern states freeze, we better look into grandma's herbal remedy book and grow herbs in pots, or start a leech farm. And moonshiners, don't forget your craft, cause when doc gets out the hacksaw, we're gonna need some powerful brew to ignore the sound of grinding bones.

If this sounds medieval, so is the thinking of big business and the congresspeople whose offices they have bought. An enlightened society takes care of the basic needs of its citizens while granting individuals the freedom to acquire "more," should "more" be desired as the fruits of their labor.

Call me a hopeless dreamer. Often I do feel hopeless. But dreams are born of imagination and new worlds unfold at the behest of our invisible wild side. So as mankind gallops across the centuries, may the good dreams manifest on earth and may the nightmares vanish with the light of dawn. That is the prayer for today.