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The Weekender: What's Happening This Weekend in Homer?

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

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OPINION

• Editorial

• Letters to the Editor

Trading blows over benefits

With so many decades of such volatile arguments over everything from gay rights to abortion to anti-war protests, who would think we’d be punching each other over healthcare?
Fundamental anti-abortionists will go so far as to bomb clinics and gun down doctors in the middle of church services – often under some relatively misguided pretenses.
And I wonder what kind of response anti-war protestors would have received had they come armed?
Recent reports of violent outbreaks at healthcare town hall meetings around the nation seem to have taken a bit more aggressive turn than just the casual verbal abuse and chest-shoving that normally welcomes town hall guests.
Last week, a man outside Obama’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire reportedly joined the “socialized healthcare protestors” with a pistol on his hip. And, in another of those “misguided pretenses,” more gun owners reportedly arrived armed at the president’s healthcare town hall in Phoenix on Monday. A photo showed a man standing with a semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.
Seriously? Over healthcare?
Is this some kind of open assertion of second-amendment rights as a threat to not being “forced” into a government-run healthcare system.
As unruly scenes unfold across television screens and YouTubes, surely others noted the irony of people trying to injure each other because of their beliefs in healthcare systems.
I don’t even think that classifies as an oxymoron, but it sure seems awfully ridiculous.
In much the same way Abraham Maslow developed his hierarchy of needs based on a solid basis of physiological well-being and survival, healthcare is an essential piece of that foundation. Basic needs include food and shelter. After that, the only thing really affecting you positively or negatively, your health. The human need to feel well has to come in there somewhere.
One of our basic human rights is adequate healthcare.
Everyone should be entitled to have his or her needs met, and that includes a healthcare system that responds to the needs of its people.
Maybe getting into fistfights and toting guns when we go for “friendly” town hall meetings really is the best way to hash out our differences.
Or maybe we could sit down and discuss our healthcare expectations civilly, with the idea of coming up with a solution – and not just berating each other and throwing punches.
We could try to list basic healthcare needs and see what kinds of discussion we could generate, but let’s face it: Do we really have any idea what we want? It’s not that easy to identify. And who gets to choose who deserves coverage and who doesn’t? Or what is covered and what isn’t?
Ask anyone suffering from a disease or illness if their affliction should be covered under healthcare benefits, and they will tell you “yes.” because, when it comes right down to it, we really just care about what kind of healthcare benefits us.
It’s human nature; the will to survive.
Or maybe that’s more of a Darwin’s theory-thing. But what’s the difference, right?

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