Poverty: America's Hidden Shame

The U.S. is the only industrialized country in the world that lacks universal public health care. This leaves about forty-two million Americans seriously at risk because they have no health insurance. Most of them have either lost or cannot afford insurance, or were denied it by their cost-cutting employers in order to increase their profit margin. Others are forced to pay for very expensive health insurance from private profit-making insurance companies, and, even though Americans over age 65 have Medicare, it is still lacking in certain significant ways, and seniors find they need supplemental insurance to get adequate coverage for adequate health care and medications.

Besides that, many privatized, for-profit hospitals and other medical facilities have been down-sized and they've reduced their nursing staff to less than a bare minimum to cut expenses and increase profits. Health insurance premiums doubled in recent years, and out-of-pocket costs that are in addition to costly premiums more than doubled. The consequence is that the U.S. health care system us unnecessarily expensive, and it leaves many people uninsured or under-insured. Due to cost-cutting it has become increasingly understaffed and plagued with accidents made by overworked hospital staff. It has many serious faults and shortcomings, all of which would be remedied by a far less expensive, universal, public non-profit health care system.

In spite of all the facts, right-wing "conservative" Republicans don’t want universal health care. They want the status quo, which is very rewarding to the wealthy few, exorbitantly costly to the majority, and often disastrous and sometimes even lethal for the working poor. Even worse, in February 2006 George W. Bush signed a bill that reduced Medicaid and Medicare benefits, and he even said that further cuts must be made. That's because, as I've said in books, he and other Republicans actually want to do away with Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. Like Ronald Reagan before them, they want to destroy the legacy of one of our greatest presidents, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who actually served the interests of all the people. (And, by the way, the Republican bill Bush signed also cut $11.9 Billion from student loans. And yet, to finance the things that he thinks are important, Bush was quite willing and eager to borrow money and make deficit spending even worse, to the point of running up a national debt that is projected to reach more than $1.3 Trillion by 2010.)

We, the people, must stand up and speak out to stop the absurdity, unfairness and inequity. The American political-economic system was bad enough before Reagan came to power. But in the decades and years since then, and especially since the Reaganite George W. Bush gained power, things have gotten much worse, much more unfair, and much more inequitable.

The wealthy in America must be required to pay their FAIR SHARE of taxes, as they do in Europe, to ensure sufficient revenue to balance the budget and provide what our nation really needs, which is quality public education, public health care, public pre-school child care, public welfare, public safety, good roads, bridges, water systems, utilities, and all the other things that we all need. That’s what good government should provide. And it will when we do what is only fair, to require the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes, which they can well afford.

Also, everyone who works for a living should be paid a decent, adequate living wage. That too would be only fair. To claim otherwise is utterly dishonest, and those who have and still do claim otherwise are not only dishonest, but self-serving, deceptive, and unfair.

I tell you that as we treat the poor and the least of our brethren, so we treat the Lord and our very Self, for we are One in Spirit. That's why this message is so important.

© 2002 - 2007 Joseph J. Adamson

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