Folks, it is not too late to keep the insurers from winning, but time is running short. We need to think of the coming weeks as some of the most important weeks in the history of this country. We need to think that way because they will be, and we must redouble our efforts to make sure members of Congress put our interests above those of private health insurers and others who view reform as a way to make more money.
If we want to take back control or our health care system from the big for-profit companies that have wrecked it, we must take back control of this debate. We must begin to talk in ways that reach our friends and neighbors who have been influenced by the lies.
We need to tell them that we can continue to have a system that allows 20,000 Americans to die every year because they don't have insurance, or we can have a system that will make sure their sons and daughters are not one of them.
We should ask the skeptics of a public option, who are afraid that giving people a choice of a government-run plan will lead to socialism, if they would want to go back to the day when Americans had to buy private fire insurance.
Tell them if they lived in Ben Franklin's day and they didn't have a shield on the outside of their house indicating they were insured, their town's private fire insurance companies would let their house burn down. The private insurance companies would keep your fire from spreading to your insured next-door neighbor's house, but your house would soon be nothing more than a pile of ashes.
We must remind our family members and our friends and neighbors why we are having this debate in the first place. If they tell you they don't think their tax dollars should be used to pay for someone else's coverage, point out to them that they already are paying for the care uninsured people receive when they go to the emergency room and can't afford to pay the exorbitant bills they get from the hospital. Those of us who are insured pay an extra thousand dollars in premiums every year just to cover that uncompensated care.
If they say they don't want to saddle their children and grandchildren with additional taxes, ask them if they have thought what might happen to their children and grandchildren if they found themselves among the millions of people without health insurance or, maybe more likely, among the underinsured.
Ask them how they would feel if their daughter came down with breast cancer soon after she and your son-in-law moved into their dream house and just as your grandchildren were beginning to think about college.
Ask them how they would feel if their daughter and son-in-law learned that the insurance they thought would be there when they needed it required them to pay so much out of their own pockets that they couldn't afford to pay for their daughter's cancer treatments and also make the house payments.
Ask them how they would feel if their children and grandchildren were forced out of their dream home and into bankruptcy, and ask them how they would feel if their grandchildren had to give up their dreams of going to college.
Ask them how they would feel if their granddaughter fell into the wrong crowd and died of a drug overdose just as her high school friends were graduating from the college she herself had once dreamed of graduating from. Ask them how they would feel when they found out that this all happened because their daughter's private insurance company forced her to pay more for her care than her family could afford just so it could continue to pay its CEO $30 million a year and meet Wall Street's profit expectations.
Folks, I believe we Americans by and large are a compassionate people. Yes, we believe in individual responsibility, but we also believe in the Golden Rule.
I don't know a single American - or at least I hope I don't - who would knowingly wish the future I just described on anyone's family. But the sad reality is that many of the people who have become unwitting spokespeople for the insurance industry - the people who are objecting to a public insurance option because they have bought into the lies the insurance industry's shills are telling them - will ensure that that horrific future is a reality for millions of Americans, including their loved ones, if the insurance industry wins this debate again.
So over the coming weeks, we must tell our conservative friends who are worried needlessly about a government-takeover of our health care system that what we all should really be concerned about is the Wall-Street takeover that has occurred while we were not paying attention.
It is that takeover that has led to more and more working Americans being forced into the ranks of the uninsured. It is that takeover that has forced millions more of us into the ranks of the underinsured because insurers are making us pay thousands of dollars out of our own pockets before they'll pay a dime.
It is that takeover that has forced many of our neighbors out of their homes and into bankruptcy. And it is that takeover that is causing more and more small businesses to stop offering coverage to their employees because of the exorbitant premiums that greedy, Wall-Street-driven insurers are charging them.
If we want to take back control or our health care system from the big for-profit companies that have wrecked it, we must take back control of this debate. We must begin to talk in ways that reach our friends and neighbors who have been influenced by the lies.
We need to tell them that we can continue to have a system that allows 20,000 Americans to die every year because they don't have insurance, or we can have a system that will make sure their sons and daughters are not one of them.
We should ask the skeptics of a public option, who are afraid that giving people a choice of a government-run plan will lead to socialism, if they would want to go back to the day when Americans had to buy private fire insurance.
We must remind our family members and our friends and neighbors why we are having this debate in the first place. If they tell you they don't think their tax dollars should be used to pay for someone else's coverage, point out to them that they already are paying for the care uninsured people receive when they go to the emergency room and can't afford to pay the exorbitant bills they get from the hospital. Those of us who are insured pay an extra thousand dollars in premiums every year just to cover that uncompensated care.
If they say they don't want to saddle their children and grandchildren with additional taxes, ask them if they have thought what might happen to their children and grandchildren if they found themselves among the millions of people without health insurance or, maybe more likely, among the underinsured.
Ask them how they would feel if their daughter came down with breast cancer soon after she and your son-in-law moved into their dream house and just as your grandchildren were beginning to think about college.
Ask them how they would feel if their daughter and son-in-law learned that the insurance they thought would be there when they needed it required them to pay so much out of their own pockets that they couldn't afford to pay for their daughter's cancer treatments and also make the house payments.
Ask them how they would feel if their children and grandchildren were forced out of their dream home and into bankruptcy, and ask them how they would feel if their grandchildren had to give up their dreams of going to college.
Ask them how they would feel if their granddaughter fell into the wrong crowd and died of a drug overdose just as her high school friends were graduating from the college she herself had once dreamed of graduating from. Ask them how they would feel when they found out that this all happened because their daughter's private insurance company forced her to pay more for her care than her family could afford just so it could continue to pay its CEO $30 million a year and meet Wall Street's profit expectations.
Folks, I believe we Americans by and large are a compassionate people. Yes, we believe in individual responsibility, but we also believe in the Golden Rule.
I don't know a single American - or at least I hope I don't - who would knowingly wish the future I just described on anyone's family. But the sad reality is that many of the people who have become unwitting spokespeople for the insurance industry - the people who are objecting to a public insurance option because they have bought into the lies the insurance industry's shills are telling them - will ensure that that horrific future is a reality for millions of Americans, including their loved ones, if the insurance industry wins this debate again.
So over the coming weeks, we must tell our conservative friends who are worried needlessly about a government-takeover of our health care system that what we all should really be concerned about is the Wall-Street takeover that has occurred while we were not paying attention.
It is that takeover that has led to more and more working Americans being forced into the ranks of the uninsured. It is that takeover that has forced millions more of us into the ranks of the underinsured because insurers are making us pay thousands of dollars out of our own pockets before they'll pay a dime.
It is that takeover that has forced many of our neighbors out of their homes and into bankruptcy. And it is that takeover that is causing more and more small businesses to stop offering coverage to their employees because of the exorbitant premiums that greedy, Wall-Street-driven insurers are charging them.
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