Over the past months we have published on this site several articles in support of health care reform. Both Prentice and I have often laid out our arguments and made our best case in an effort to persuade the unpersuaded that reforming our health care system is something that cannot wait. People are dying. There is urgency to this issue.
Not in the abstract. Not just in the form of nameless and faceless statistical data in some executive summary, but in the present reality of flesh and blood people like your son or daughter, wife, sister, husband or father. People are enduring agonizing, unrelenting and untreated pain. Thousands are unnecessarily dying because they have neither health insurance nor the money to pay for medical care.
Let me repeat and emphasize this point: During every hour of every day in this country, the wealthiest country on earth, people are suffering unspeakable agonies and dying because they do not have the money that our health care industry demands for treatment and care. It is a scandal of which each one of us, as Americans, should be ashamed. As a Christian, I believe it is a scandal for which God will one day hold each of us accountable.
Last night, on his MSNBC program Countdown, Keith Olbermann devoted an entire hour to what he termed a Special Comment on health care reform. Olbermann’s comment was, indeed, special. Never have I heard the issues addressed more honestly and forcefully. There is nothing that I can add to his remarks.
The video to the right of this article presents the first segment of Olbermann’s Special Comment. Links to the remainder of the program are contained in the video. If you do nothing further to educate yourself on the issue of health care reform, please take the time to watch this video. Remember, it really is a matter a life and death.
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I saw the program when it first aired. Powerful stuff.
I saw the originial broadcast and it was indeed, powerful. It also baffles me that those of us who profess to be “christian” (little ‘c’ intended) are not marching the halls of every governmental office in this country. While I do believe in peaceful demonstrations I am coming close to thinking that we should simply take our injured, ill, dying and maybe even dead and line the halls of congress with the bodies. Of course, we are to civilized to do this – but maybe we have been civilized too long. God forbid.