In the last three weeks, while congress has been fighting about healthcare, 53,507 people filed for bankruptcy due to crushing medical debt.
Think about this for a second: the United States is the only rich country in the world whose health care system routinely bankrupts the sick. I mean, that’s not just unconscionable; it’s depraved.
Don’t we want to live in a society that can describe itself as “just”? Don’t we want to comfort the afflicted and not stand by while they are bankrupted, especially if the price is only modestly more “affliction of the comfortable” in the form of higher taxes?
I hear the objections from the American political right to universal health care, that it’s a “threat to freedom” and “a harbinger of tyranny” and lots of other nonsense, and what I hear is ideology trumping both facts and compassion.
Personally, I’d love to live in a country where no one is ever bankrupted due to illness.
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