IT’S ALL VERY PERSONAL

By Edwin Cooney

As the struggle for passage or defeat of President Obama’s healthcare proposal reaches its climax, Americans appear as jittery as a bowl of Jell-O atop a bucking bronco. President Obama at least twice has postponed a scheduled trip to Asia.

Some Americans, this observer hopes it is most of them, believe the president’s proposal ought to pass in order to provide protection for millions of Americans vulnerable to the increasingly outrageous costs of the present insurance-girded system. Others believe it ought to pass, but that it is not comprehensive enough to secure Americans their right to “…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Still others believe it ought to fail for that very reason. Many Americans, including but not solely the wealthy among us, believe it ought to fail because it is contrary to our political pedigree and will, even worse, bankrupt our future.

Additionally, there are numerous reasons why individuals favor or oppose the current healthcare proposal. Some oppose any government regulation of the “free market”—which this observer believes doesn’t even exist because, after all, the market isn’t and never has been free. It costs money not human energy or commitment or even sincere patriotism to play in it. After all, money is the coin of the realm, not human spirituality or morality.

Our current debate pummels us with other fears as well. Some Americans fear that their tax money will pay for abortions while still others resent the fact that their hard-earned tax money won’t pay for those same abortions.

Hence, once again in our history, we’re at a cross roads and we’re nervous. So the question is, should we be? Answer: we’re understandably nervous because, after all, this particular national debate is ultimately a personal one. Nervousness and uncertainty are one thing, panic is quite another matter.

Taking this argument a step further, it’s also natural for us to want to control our future as much as we can. Any one of us may, and probably will, recover from a costly illness before we close our eyes for the last time. It’s equally possible that America could suffer financial illness or even ruin by financing the people’s health. However, minus overwhelming evidence that the current system is as good as it can get in a truly free society, affordability of healthcare has to be a matter of national necessity.

It’s unlikely that our national fate hangs in the balance over the question of healthcare reform as it did during the US/Soviet Missile Crisis of October 1962. However, we’re all concerned for the wellbeing and fate of friends and neighbors, family members and fellow citizens. The presence of a single individual can make a huge difference in the direction of all our lives.


Therefore, the physical, financial, and, yes, the political status of some hang in the balance over the immediate outcome of healthcare reform legislation.

For some of us, the issue is America’s debt in the absence of cost containment. For others, it is fear of higher taxes. Still others worry about the value of their stocks. Some fear dominance by the president’s liberal or even “socialist” doctrine.

As I see it, except for the last point, the above are all legitimate concerns; however, they are concerns of a free and rich nation. Thus, it seems to me that this rich nation can afford to be genuinely concerned about situations such as the following:

• the fate of the struggling family whose bread winner has been stricken with cancer or heart disease and loses both his income and health benefits;
• The widowed mother whose education isn’t sufficient to employ her in a job that would provide healthcare benefits for her blind twin daughters;

And so on. It is possible to exhaust all of the remaining space in this short commentary outlining the tragic conditions of hardworking, patriotic, spiritually-worthy people who deserve our collective concern and care.

The point here is that this issue is not only more personal but, even more, it is more personally ongoing than even America’s last horrendous crisis of September 11th, 2001.

In the aftermath of 9/11, we had an antagonist that our leadership was anxious to be admired for conquering. Isn’t it ironic that the same political ideologues who were brave enough to go to war against Osama Bin Laden don’t appear to be brave enough to tackle America’s most enduring foe -- catastrophic disease?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY