Turning a Corner With Healthcare Reform

Healthcare reform passed after a lengthy debate. With President Obama, I agree: it was the right thing to do.

It is NEVER wrong to do the right thing, even if it is costly. It is always COSTLY to avoid doing right just because it is expensive or lessens our personal and pet accounts. It is ALWAYS RIGHT to advocate for healthcare for all people rather than protect the status quo at the expense of the weak, the dysfunctional, and the unable.

As a lifelong Republican, I found it increasingly difficult to reject change (reform) simply to protect the status quo. I could allow for States Rights until it savagely protected continued violation of the civil rights of my black friends and peers. As a Christian American, I could not tolerate that and will not!

David Brooks makes good sense when writing, “In a sensible country, people would see Obama as a president trying to define a modern brand of moderate progressivism. In a sensible country, Obama would be able to clearly define this project without fear of offending the people he needs to get legislation passed. But we don't live in that country. We live in a country in which many people live in information cocoons in which they only talk to members of their own party and read blogs of their own sect. They come away with perceptions fundamentally at odds with reality, fundamentally misunderstanding the man in the Oval Office.”

I remember when Ronald Reagan privatized healthcare. I saw some of the social effects of his "politics" first in California. Later, I worked with mentally-emotionally dysfunctional men in our current community, turned out of our government facilities and stored in privately profitable “Half-way Houses” where they wandered city streets, behaving in dysfunctional manners.

With our large number of hospitalized War Veterans, it was nothing to have those men wandering doped and drunken in the business district, publicly urinating on the streets. We had "a “home” in our neighborhood and saw health care suddenly become a private industry in quick cadence with increasingly exorbitant profits, often operated by people whose only qualification was “operating capital.” I have no problem with capitalism until we allow it to become a privatized monopoly cannibalizing and devouring the system, as it currently is.

Health Care is such that it should NEVER BE FOR "PROFIT" nor should it be allowed to monopolize, for everyone has a right to equal Health Care. Many joined me and others in complaining about the high cost of healthcare, especially after we were "priced out" after 30 years of being a "good paying customer." We complained about the high cost of Healthcare Reform, but few challenged our 2008 spending nationally of $1.9 million per minute for "war and defense", so-called.

Republicans never complained that everyone is forced--even against their wishes--to support police and fire protection, and a host of other social benefits. Nor will Republicans admit that they used the “reconciliation” procedure to pass their tax cuts that led to many of the current problems we face, as well as the War that George Bush involved all of us in (interesting how we all play politics).

Only time will tell how well our attempted Healthcare Reform will work. However, I strongly support what has been launched; I believe it is a right step in the right direction, without going to far either to the right or the left. I can and will support that.

Walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
Wayne