The Old Populism- See No Evil

As the media and the populist majority joyfully drive the last stake into health reform I can’t help but feel like we’re re-living a 50’s era myopia. Replace race relations with health care and we’re back in time 50-60 years. 

The majority of the electorate favored segregation back then. Dixiecrats took their bigotry to the Democratic convention. Governors called out the National Guard to defend the schools from integration. Outsiders from the north were murdered by the KKK, beaten, kicked and jailed by the police for radical behavior such as sitting in a diner, or riding on a bus, walking down the street, or even more radical, for helping people register to vote.

It took a Supreme Court ruling to break the deadlock. It took assassinations of a president, his brother, and a black minister to wake up America to the injustices we accepted- as if they were manifest destiny.

Today 45 million people live without health care. Some admittedly don’t want it. Some don’t need it. But millions of people want it and need it. Yet we turn away from their need just like we walked by “White Only” water fountains and restrooms. Our myopia blurs our conscience and we accept the injustice benignly. We can’t feel ashamed if we don’t see it.

So we keep our eyes on the insured, the healthy, the employed, the educated, and try not to  feel ashamed for our collective neglect of millions of Americans who need health care and can’t get it. I suppose deep inside we hope they’ll get by somehow.

Someday the sorry state of health care may lead to a more activist approach to health care reform like the civil rights movement in the 50's and 60's. In the mean time we  might as well have a sign on the hospital entrance that says. “Insured Only”.