Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Let 'Em Die

With the whole Ron Paul "Let Him Die" brouhaha last week, I had really hoped that the morality of healthcare in America would start to get more attention in the media.  Sadly, I was wrong.

There are many financial and political arguments to be made regarding America's healthcare calamity, but no one seems to want to touch the moral argument.  For all the talk we hear about Christianity and faith in politics, especially on the side of the GOP, why don't we talk and think more about what the "right" thing to do is rather than what the most cost-effect thing to do is?

Republicans are so willing to make moral arguments on every other issue of the day.  Abortion, gay marriage; these things are not argued by the right on their financial impacts, but on the morality.  So why are they so squeamish about even the sheer mention of the morality of healthcare.

Recently, a 24-year-old man died from a tooth infection that spread to his brain.  Yes, that happened. 
Here.
In America. 
An easily treatable, preventable thing that in any other western "civilized" country would have been treated quickly through some sort of government directed plan.  Was his needless death moral?  Is that what Jesus would approve of?

My brother once said that you really can't argue about healthcare reform because it's a moral issue and people refuse to talk about the morality or even see it (or something to that effect - I'm sure I'm misquoting).  But he was right.  Until this country grapples with the undeniable fact that our healthcare "system" is truly amoral, we will never have significant change.

3 comments:

  1. Amen,sister, you preach the truth. I can,t tell you how it grieves the heart that faith has been hijacked by right-wing fundamentalism. Michael More is the prophet of our time,truly, he stands in the tradition of the great Hebrew prophets and Jesus, calling out for justice, denouncing & condemming hypocracy.
    Together, we could do some good by putting into words a secular morality, to counter the accusation of "the immoral left." Of couse it has been done.

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  2. *the document known as The Constitution.

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  3. This is why I shake my head when people like Bachmann say Obama wants class warfare. The upper class declared war on everyone else a long, long time ago!

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Let's keep it civil people.