February 14, 2008--The Richest Country in History
My mother had a small stroke on Saturday (she is doing well) and from what we have been experiencing during the week in emergency rooms, ICUs, and now in rehab, I can see up close and personal the sorry state of our healthcare system and why all candidates seeking their parties’ nominations have placed so much emphasis on it.
We all know this, but unless you have spent 24 hours in an emergency room you cannot have the full visceral sense of how ERs have taken the place of family doctors for the poor and uninsured. While waiting for my mother to be moved to a bed in the ICU, she spent almost a full day and night on a gurney in the crowded ER corridor. Most who were wheeled in were not true emergencies but rather parents with kids and the elderly who had flu-like symptoms.
It was difficult not to feel rage about the fact that in what we all refer to as “the richest country in the history of the world,” while every other Western democracy and a few totalitarian states have medical systems that cover everyone, we as yet do not. And in spite of the promises of our candidates we are unlikely ever to see our most vulnerable citizens covered. There is just too much profit in the medical business for much to change.
When you witness so many people who are frankly victims of corporate and political greed, when the suffering is so palpable and unfair, it is understandable why improving our broken health system is such a priority. What is not understandable is why we haven’t placed anything resembling an equal priority on, say, fixing our equally broken education system. That too is a fixable problem with many models both domestic and foreign to draw upon.
Barack Obama does at least mention it in his stump speech, talking about tuition credits for college students with the requirement that they will pay it back by engaging in a few years of public service once they graduate. But even for him it is a passing reference. Hillary Clinton does have proposals among her campaign white papers for education reform, but we never hear about them from her. The Democrats have debated 18 times and, literally, there has not been one question posed to them about education. I think it was Chis Dodd in what seemed like 100 years ago who asked the moderators, “Don’t you have a question about education?” He was ignored. They didn’t.
Yes, we must do something about heath care, but we also must improve our public schools. If this election is about the future, what is more important to that future than providing a world-class education to our children?
We all know this, but unless you have spent 24 hours in an emergency room you cannot have the full visceral sense of how ERs have taken the place of family doctors for the poor and uninsured. While waiting for my mother to be moved to a bed in the ICU, she spent almost a full day and night on a gurney in the crowded ER corridor. Most who were wheeled in were not true emergencies but rather parents with kids and the elderly who had flu-like symptoms.
It was difficult not to feel rage about the fact that in what we all refer to as “the richest country in the history of the world,” while every other Western democracy and a few totalitarian states have medical systems that cover everyone, we as yet do not. And in spite of the promises of our candidates we are unlikely ever to see our most vulnerable citizens covered. There is just too much profit in the medical business for much to change.
When you witness so many people who are frankly victims of corporate and political greed, when the suffering is so palpable and unfair, it is understandable why improving our broken health system is such a priority. What is not understandable is why we haven’t placed anything resembling an equal priority on, say, fixing our equally broken education system. That too is a fixable problem with many models both domestic and foreign to draw upon.
Barack Obama does at least mention it in his stump speech, talking about tuition credits for college students with the requirement that they will pay it back by engaging in a few years of public service once they graduate. But even for him it is a passing reference. Hillary Clinton does have proposals among her campaign white papers for education reform, but we never hear about them from her. The Democrats have debated 18 times and, literally, there has not been one question posed to them about education. I think it was Chis Dodd in what seemed like 100 years ago who asked the moderators, “Don’t you have a question about education?” He was ignored. They didn’t.
Yes, we must do something about heath care, but we also must improve our public schools. If this election is about the future, what is more important to that future than providing a world-class education to our children?
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:02 AM
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