Right now I\’m watching a show on PBS (yay, public broadcasting) called \’By the People\’, which is Town Hall sort of edited show. This episode\’s topic is the USA\’s state of healthcare.
There\’s an older, retired white guy asking \”Why, in our guilt, should we have to provide those that don\’t help themselves with healthcare?\” In fact, at all these town hall meetings organized by various PBS stations all over the country, there are a lot of people asking why the government needs to offer healthcare at all. Those who aren\’t questioning why are pointing their fingers at the government and saying that they don\’t trust the government to provide healthcare, because \”government drops the ball when providing\” everything.
The last comments were rebutted by older black individuals who pointed out that the government is already providing healthcare to some of the very needy through Medicaid and to many older and disabled individuals through Medicare. \”Should we just get rid of those programs and let those people go without?\”
I spent three hours today at my local Social Security office. There aren\’t enough chairs there. It\’s cold, there was a draft, and there was overhead flourescent lighting, so I ended up throwing out my back, pissing my pants, having my left hip lock up, and having a muscle cramp in my left calf muscle. Just to get a piece of paper that states that the government agrees that I\’m still a cripple.
Government keeps cutting Medicaid and Medicare. Truly, I want to know when the gimp army is going to hobble on down to the Mall to protest. Are people going to be able to say \”Why should there be government healthcare programs?\” when there are thousands of people with catheters, hospital beds, wheelchairs, canes, walkers, service and assistance dogs, visual translators, and prostheses blocking traffic? Are they going to look me in the eye and tell me I\’m better off dead? Well, they could…but I might decide to pee on them.
