Frederick Douglass and Health Care

Last semester I read for a class "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," the autobiography of an escaped slave-turned-abolitionist. One of the key epiphanal moments in the book is when Douglass overhears his master lambasting those "wicked abolitionists" for inciting slaves to revolt. Douglass knew nothing about abolitionism at the time, but, his reading lessons recently squashed by the same master, and having lived with the lash since a child, he decided in that moment that whatever his master hated, he would love, and whatever his master loved, he would in turn hate.

It's a moral clarity I admire, one I don't get often in studying English. Don't get me wrong, I've never been a moral relativist; but English has taught me that every text, every interpretation, argument, problem and issue is so inherently complex and ambiguous that they defy any simple explanation. I've become immediately suspicious of any simplistic binary opposition. I'm typically left in the position of the Chinese farmer of parable who simply shrugged his shoulders at every event in his life saying, "I do not know if it is good or bad."

But then there's an upset in Massachusetts, and the Republicans cheer and rally with unprecedented Party unity around...denying healthcare to the poor? Really?

These following facts are weary but apparently need repeating: 46 million Americans have no healthcare; millions more are underinsured; 700,000 people annually go bankrupt due to medical costs; in 2008, in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, 60% of all bankruptcies were still strictly healthcare related. These numbers will only increase as premiums continue to rise unchecked; small businesses will have to drop health-plans just to stay competitive. The whole of not only the Working but also Middle class is one major illness away from insolvency. To quote Joseph Smith, facts are stubborn things.

But they are also abstract, so I cite a few personal experiences: I once worked for a company that ran a charity drive for an employee whose brother needed a $200,000 life-saving procedure; the family had already maxed out its deductible and mortgaged the house. The company never matched employee donations, so the drive was largely tepid, and besides, the company just used it as a tax write-off anyways. In any case, I reflected that if one's last resort is to rely on corporate charity, one is screwed indeed.

My ex-roommate bikes, jogs, skis, and eats only organic, so it was a sick joke when he suffered a heart attack at the young age of 27. Lyme disease, undiagnosed by the University student health center (which was funded by a cost-and-corner-cutting private insurance), was the culprit. He required an ambulance (which was not pre-approved), and emergency pace-maker surgery. Predictably, the insurance company's first act was to try and find an excuse to deny him coverage; they claimed he had a pre-existing condition (as though that should matter). Finally they settled on reimbursing him only two-thirds the cost of the life-saving operation, leaving this poor college student six grand in debt. The Hospital was cool enough to help him juggle a couple costs, but really, they shouldn't have to.

I use him as an example to counter the arguments of 1) ER services are free so technically we already have universal healthcare (it's $50 just to enter the ER, and when you're impoverished, you don't have $50), and 2) that "socialized" healthcare unfairly subsidizes the willfully unhealthy with tax-payer money. Nevermind that no one dares call the Police, Fire Dept., and Military "socialist," even though they likewise are govt.-run, tax-payer funded services; because unlike the Police and Fire Dept., which thankfully not everyone needs, absolutely everyone will need healthcare at some point in their lives, no matter how healthy you keep yourself. The laws of entropy, old age, and chance work immutably on us all. Healthcare should be universal for the simple reason that disease and death are universal.

And then, most recently, my Dad confessed to me that if it had come down to it, he would have mortgaged the house just to keep Mom alive. Fortunately it never came to that; she followed the Republican health plan of dying quickly.

Which brings me back to the Republican Party's universal opposition to universal healthcare, and I have to wonder, why? Of course it comes down to money; it will cost lots of money to cover everyone, just as it cost money to pay Black people working wages instead of simply enslaving them. Suddenly the issue becomes far less ambiguous.

Republicans uniformly oppose healthcare reform; therefore, like Frederick Douglass, whatever healthcare position the Republicans hate, I must henceforth love, and whatever they love, I must henceforth hate. The names of Joe Wilson, Scott Brown, Sarah Palin and Glen Beck must be as George Wallace, James Calhoun, Strom Thurmond and Jefferson Davis; the Tea Party must be as the Klan; and failure to pass reform must be as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1851.

Certainly America as a whole is doing better than 150 years ago, when slavery in America was openly embraced and defended. But as we approach the 150th anniversary of the Civil War that ended slavery at last, we once again find a black man under fire for calling for radical reform of America. Like Douglass, he calls for the richest, most powerful democracy on Earth to at last live up to the self-evident truths that all men are created equal, (universal, we might say), that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of...well shoot, without healthcare, we're not even living up to that first one, are we.

It's moral clarity I can believe in.