You Shall Judge Your Neighbor as Yourself

People are wondering how to sell universal, single-payer health care to Americans.   There's lots of smart talk out there about containing costs and substantial labor market rigidities and other topics that set the average American's toes a-tappin'.   Here's the thing that the GOP and their corporate masters know and that we, who want universal, single-payer health care must learn: talk to the lizard brain.  That's who BushCo was talking to today during his reprehensible health care speech, designed to drill it into our skulls that we are under no circumstances to care about what happens to our fellow Americans.   From this clarion call to self-interest: (emph mine)

I like the idea of people making decisions that are -- that will, one, enhance their health, and two, save money. The doc told me that -- we were looking at one of these brilliant heart guys working for him. You're not going to believe the technology in this hospital, by the way. If you're a Cleveland resident, you ought to be proud of this hospital. It's unbelievable. (Applause.)

He said something pretty wise, though. He said, you can have all the technology that man can conceivably create, but if you continue to smoke, we're going backwards. If you're not exercising, if you're not taking care of the body yourself, all the technology isn't going to save your life. In other words, there is a certain responsibility that we have as citizens to take care of ourselves.

No plan to sell universal, single-payer health care to Americans is going to succeed unless it finds a way to convince our American lizard brains that sick people don't deserve to be sick - even the people who make bad choices; even the children stupid enough to be born to poor, lazy parents; even the people who have the poor judgment to live so long that they suffer the ravages of age.   We have to accept the fact that providing health care for all of us is a shared burden, the benefit of which we will not share equally all the time.   That takes some serious loving of our neighbors and, in fact, ourselves because we also have to learn to believe that we deserve that care ourselves should we need it.    

Linda Peeno, the managed care medical director featured in Sicko as the woman who denied a life-saving procedure to a man who later died from his illness, knows what really stands in the way of getting universal single-payer health care in this sad, frightened country:

Though we desperately need radical health reform and urgent patient protections, a change in policy will not be enough. We need a change of heart and spirit with equal urgency. We need to create a culture of care, compassion, and connection – not just for health care, but for all our ways of need for one another.

Building that sense of community and shared sacrifice is the real challenge.  That is the ideal that the horrible, horrible BushCo was undermining today.  Again:

In other words, there is a certain responsibility that we have as citizens to take care of ourselves.

It's late and I'm tired and right now I can't see we fight back against that message, as deeply ingrained as it is in the psyche of Americans who can't afford the best.  The best I can do is offer my personal antidote to depair:

Of course, that's from Australia.

Note: I heard about BushCo's sickening speech from Digby, who linked to Dover Bitch's excellent post that looks at a slew of examples of why Americans can't make the sort of responsible decisions that will keep them healthy, and therefore virtuous and deserving of health care, forever.

Comments

[KathyF]

The problem is that personal responsibility for health and national health care are treated as the same issue. They're not.

If you smoke, you have to accept that you're more likely to get cancer. But you still deserve to be treated for cancer.

If you follow the SAD--Standard American Diet--you're likelier to get cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. yet you still deserve health care.

If, like me, you spent many years vainly trying to get a tan, you have to accept you may have skin cancer one day. I still hope to be treated by my govt health care if and when I do.

This does not mean we shouldn't encourage and support personal responsibility--i.e. good health choices--whenever possible. Free nicotine patches. Free advice on diet. Subsidies for healthy food, not SAD food. Public warnings to stay out of the sun.

It's easy to stand up and say "personal responsibility" but, as Dover Bitch pointed out, look who's talking.

Off to pour more green tea.

[eRobin]

Good point and it should be obvious since not everyone who indulges in irresponsible behavior gets sick and vice versa. But the idea of being responsible for our misfortune - health-related and otherwise - is something that the powers that be work very hard to have the powerless and disadvantaged internalize. Remember that study that said that the wealthy almost never mention Luck as a reason for their success? It's fruit of the same tree and if we don't do somehthing about that, we're going to lose Social Security, what's left of Medicare and never even get close to a health care system that's universal and single-payer.