This year's commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. comes as the nation struggles with the issue of health reform. What would Dr. King have thought of the current proposal? While nobody would presume to speak for him, his writings and speeches leave us plenty of clues. How better to honor his memory than to apply his thinking to such an important issue?
We can be sure that Dr. King would demand action. "Of all the forms of inequality," he said, "injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." It's disgraceful to allow 45,000 people to die each year because they don't have health insurance, and we can assume he would support any effort to lower that number.
But those deaths won't disappear altogether under the current proposal. The CBO estimates that 9 million people will remain uninsured, and they're awfully optimistic about the number of people who can pay staggeringly high premiums. The latest figures show that there are 46.3 million uninsured Americans. That means that even if the CBO is right, more than 8,700 people will still die each year from lack of insurance. The actual number could be much greater.
Nor will we have equal health care for all. The infant mortality rate for African American babies in the
"... elderly black and Hispanic patients often received substandard care for common but serious conditions like heart attacks, congestive heart failure and pneumonia. esearchers say their data suggests that the nation's healthcare system is racially and ethnically segregated, not just for the elderly, but across the board."
These elderly patients have Medicare, and many higher-income minorities have employer coverage, so this is not an insurance issue. It's the product of an ongoing system - call it "healthcare apartheid" - that treats minority patients differently and less effectively than whites. In 2010, American healthcare is still "separate and unequal."
It's also worth considering what Dr. King might have thought of health reform that has jettisoned the public option, leaving for-profit insurance companies in sole command of most Americans' healthcare. We can't know his reaction, but we do know that he said "traditional capitalism"
has "created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few, and has encouraged smallhearted men to become cold and conscienceless ..."
Added Dr. King: "The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition ..."
Will the coverage people receive tomorrow protect them in time of need? Reform will provide many people with health insurance - and will require many others to purchase it. But our current private-insurance system still leaves actual medical treatment out of many people's economic grasp, and often fails to protect them from financial ruin caused by illness or injury.
The problem's getting worse: "Insured people in poor or fair health experienced more than a 5 percentage point increase in unmet need (9.0% in 2003 vs. 14.2% in 2007)," a recent study concluded. These findings are consistent with a Gallup poll showing that three out of ten Americans, the vast majority of whom had health insurance, said they were forced to put off needed care.
People will have insurance, but not assurance, after reform passes. They will receive coverage but won't always receive care.
It's hard to imagine that Dr. King would be satisfied with mandating Americans to purchase inadequate insurance from for-profit companies, or with the Senate bill's harsh treatment of some Americans at the lowest end of the income scale. A family of three making $25,000 per year would pay $1,025 each year in premiums under the Senate bill, while under the House bill they would be covered by Medicaid with no premiums at all.
What about the so-called "Cadillac tax"? It's hard to believe Dr. King would support taxing costlier benefits, especially when "rich" benefits have very little influence on whether a benefit plan
falls under the tax or not. The discriminatory effect of the tax , which cuts benefits because of forces outside people's control, seems hard to reconcile with Dr. King's philosophy.
Dr. King would probably be gratified that health reform will benefit many lower-income people. But it's hard to picture him supporting provisions which place heavy burdens on those who can ill afford it. Reform accomplishes some worthwhile things, but only at the cost of a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to for-profit insurers.
Many people on the Left have been cheering for the Senate bill for weeks. They say that those noisy activists pressing for a better bill are too abrasive and too demanding, that they're making life too difficult for the President and Congress. For guidance on that, we'll have to turn to
Dr. King's famous Letter From a Birmingham Jail:
"I must confess I am not afraid of the word 'tension.' I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth."
On this Martin Luther King Day, the struggle isn't over. There's still time to fight for the most just, wise, and equitable bill possible. And if there's a signing ceremony, the time to fight won't be over then either. The work, in fact, will have just begun.
____________________________________________Richard Eskow is currently working with the Campaign for America's Future to stop the health excise tax. He blogs at:
No Middle Class Health Tax
A Night Light
The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog
Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow
He would not have suggested Rosa Parks sit halfway back on the bus, and that starting in 2014, and then worked to improve her position over the years. Nor would he have advocated billions of dollars for more busses, so everyone could have a front row seat. For sure, his dream would not run on to over 1000 pages.
I'm pretty positive that's what he'll think.
i find it obnoxious and unnecessary.thats not to say i dont believe in hc reform.i do.of course,what dems are proposing is amazingly weak,and barely 1/2 of what pres obama campaigned on.but cant we just leave it alone?
Exactly. Dr. King wouldn't have wanted people guessing what he wanted.
I have a close friend whose sister's co-worker knows someone who is African American, so I think I can speak with some authority on this.
What the media doesn't realize is that it's not THEIR PLACE to decide that they are "FAIR AND BALANCED" or "KEEPING PEOPLE HONEST" and the likes. It's up to the viewship to view your channel and conclude that you are fair and balanced. They should just do their job and HONESTLY report the news. We the people will then decide whether your reporting is worth a plug nickel.
One reason to love the health care bill is that as time goes on, it can be improved upon. If there is never a bill, things simply remain formidable. Business as usual. Greed and abuse of the American citizens remains solidly in place.
Example: Medicare Part D. This bill closes the doughnut hole. Without the bill, which in parts has been good, this improvement couldn't possible take place.
The fight has not at all been for the good of the American People. Political motivation has made this difficult from the beginning. I think that Dr. King would say, "Get a bill and then work constantly to improve it. If we never get it, we never begin on the road to making it beneficial to all our people."
"That's just the way it is ... some things never change ..."
A man like this points a firebrand at what people already know is wrong, but have been numbed to accept. He condemns it vociferously, and people finally listen, finally change because they always knew that it was true.
Had he not been there, we might be debating in Congress to make sure that black people in their separate but not-so-equal schools had access to the same education as the white kids, but without disturbing the "sacred standing stones" of bigotry that divided them. No, true change happens by tearing the curtain of the temple "in twain."
Today, we are faced with something far more enormous than bigotry. It is a deadly enemy that attacks every one of us. It, too, is a "peculiar institution." It declares itself to be a legitimate thing, just because it has always been there. Even though it is named and prohibited by an actual clause of the US Constitution it fights for its protection, using the only weapon that it knows or needs: Money.
This "enemy within" is Bribery. Though expressly cast-out by Article 2 Section 4, it thrives by ACKNOWLEDGED payments of more than $1 Million per DAY to every Member of Congress, and to many more.
There can be no "reform" anywhere until this Enemy is conquered.
The media doing us a great disservice . Today on CNN for example they had on Jennifer Donahue and a very one sided conversation. Most people will not know who she is , she a republican political senior advisor – but they didn't say that on CNN. What she said (and no one questioned her remark ) was people do not want Obama's health care reform that's why the people in MA are voting for Brown and they want Obama to focus on jobs, that he's spent this year only focusing on health care not jobs. Hello? No one questioned this remark? They just let her get away with a lie? What is a stuimulas plan what does it do ? It creates jobs . I thought under Bush they said presidents cant really create jobs anyway. isn't it time we stop allowing one sided conversations and reporters who just allow them to spew misinformation? Obamas been working on trying to also create jobs - stop the lies MS Donahue
Eskow begins his post by writing, "We can assume he [MLKJr.] would support any effort to lower that number" (of uninsured). He then continues with: "It's hard to imagine that Dr. King would be satisfied with mandating Americans"; "It's hard to believe Dr. King would support taxing costlier benefits" and; "it's hard to picture him supporting provisions which place heavy burdens ..."
He [Eskow] uses MLKJr's name to argue against the reform bill. Eskow will use any holiday or hero to push for his - the Republicans' - wish, to stop the healthcare reform bill.
The idea that the GOP wants healthcare reform of any sort is wrong, there have been many years and chances to contribute yet the only word from the Republicans and their supporters, is "No."
But she's wrong about everything else, so I think it's safe to say she's wrong about that as well.