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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPierce: Thoughts From a Hospital Bed
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a54870/healthcare-commodity-human-right/...The staff at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, all of them, will always have my thanks and prayers. But although Jimmy Kimmel beat me to this by a couple of days, what continued to strike me over the past week was the fact that the critical element in my care was that I could afford it....
From this standpoint, with my Mississippi plastics worker hanging out at the side of my bed, I watched the Republicans fall all over themselves trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act while pretending they weren't doing that very thing. (An atypical presentation of a common condition.) For a good, long, healthy while, I was completely one of The American People, my privileged view of our democratic follies clouded for a moment by more than just the pharmaceuticals. I was looking through a haze of frustration and pain, and considerable anger, for me and for my phantom pal from the plastics plant. Human health is not a commodity, to be bargained and sold and traded as though it were any other consumer good.
I was lying in a hospital, doped to the gills, chatting in my mind with an imaginary fellow citizen, and I could figure that out. Why in bloody hell can't they? They're out to wreck the only piece of effective legislation that made this a little easier for me and for my pal that has emerged in the last half-century. Everything about the proposed replacement is cruelly inadequate, because that's what it was designed to be. The pre-existing conditions protections are cheesecloth; the high-risk pools are guaranteed to bring us back to the days of generally unaffordable premiums. It's still a tax bill dressed up as healthcare reform, which is like calling a crop subsidy a law enforcement measure...
The debate on the essential American political identitywhich I contend began in all modern contexts with the belated acknowledgement of the rights granted to African-American citizens in the wake of the Civil Warhas not even half-begun. The question of who we are as a nation is as unresolved as it ever has been. The value of the political commonsand the distribution of the benefits thereofis still in a perilous place. The notion that the American republic is an ongoing experiment in self-government is one to which I still subscribe, but, dammit, these days, we seem to be closer than ever to the moment when that experiment turns to one of complete devolution, as we walk the republic back through all the mistakes of the past from which we'd thought we learned. Hell, the Greeks knew that social inequality was the route through which democracy turns to oligarchy. We were supposed to have learned that in 1787.
From this standpoint, with my Mississippi plastics worker hanging out at the side of my bed, I watched the Republicans fall all over themselves trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act while pretending they weren't doing that very thing. (An atypical presentation of a common condition.) For a good, long, healthy while, I was completely one of The American People, my privileged view of our democratic follies clouded for a moment by more than just the pharmaceuticals. I was looking through a haze of frustration and pain, and considerable anger, for me and for my phantom pal from the plastics plant. Human health is not a commodity, to be bargained and sold and traded as though it were any other consumer good.
I was lying in a hospital, doped to the gills, chatting in my mind with an imaginary fellow citizen, and I could figure that out. Why in bloody hell can't they? They're out to wreck the only piece of effective legislation that made this a little easier for me and for my pal that has emerged in the last half-century. Everything about the proposed replacement is cruelly inadequate, because that's what it was designed to be. The pre-existing conditions protections are cheesecloth; the high-risk pools are guaranteed to bring us back to the days of generally unaffordable premiums. It's still a tax bill dressed up as healthcare reform, which is like calling a crop subsidy a law enforcement measure...
The debate on the essential American political identitywhich I contend began in all modern contexts with the belated acknowledgement of the rights granted to African-American citizens in the wake of the Civil Warhas not even half-begun. The question of who we are as a nation is as unresolved as it ever has been. The value of the political commonsand the distribution of the benefits thereofis still in a perilous place. The notion that the American republic is an ongoing experiment in self-government is one to which I still subscribe, but, dammit, these days, we seem to be closer than ever to the moment when that experiment turns to one of complete devolution, as we walk the republic back through all the mistakes of the past from which we'd thought we learned. Hell, the Greeks knew that social inequality was the route through which democracy turns to oligarchy. We were supposed to have learned that in 1787.
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Pierce: Thoughts From a Hospital Bed (Original Post)
mcar
May 2017
OP
I will take sorrow at every progressive who suffers, but I will exult in the pain
KingCharlemagne
May 2017
#11
brer cat
(24,544 posts)2. Bears repeating:
Human health is not a commodity, to be bargained and sold and traded as though it were any other consumer good.
Thanks for posting, mcar.
mcar
(42,287 posts)7. On this day, it surely bears repeating
Thanks brer.
nolabear
(41,956 posts)3. Whoa! I had no idea he'd been sick. Nothing like it to bring it home.
This is theory til it's you, and you're broke.
malaise
(268,844 posts)4. Excellent read
THIS
And not even in the Democratic Party
The debate on the essential American political identitywhich I contend began in all modern contexts with the belated acknowledgement of the rights granted to African-American citizens in the wake of the Civil Warhas not even half-begun. The question of who we are as a nation is as unresolved as it ever has been. The value of the political commonsand the distribution of the benefits thereofis still in a perilous place. The notion that the American republic is an ongoing experiment in self-government is one to which I still subscribe, but, dammit, these days, we seem to be closer than ever to the moment when that experiment turns to one of complete devolution, as we walk the republic back through all the mistakes of the past from which we'd thought we learned. Hell, the Greeks knew that social inequality was the route through which democracy turns to oligarchy. We were supposed to have learned that in 1787.
mcar
(42,287 posts)8. I loved that too, malaise
So well written.
MBS
(9,688 posts)5. Please get well soon, Charlie.
We need you!
lexington filly
(239 posts)6. Hits the nail on its head again!
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)9. Charlie Pierce is thoughtful, clear, and a patriot
We need more journalists like him.
mcar
(42,287 posts)10. All that and a great writer!
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)11. I will take sorrow at every progressive who suffers, but I will exult in the pain
and suffering henceforth of any and all Republican adults. They OWN this shite and I hope they suffer grievous and ghastly pain and death as a consequence of their folly.
You voted for Trump and now you're suffering? You FUCKING DESERVE it.