It’s fun to write about politics; this blog has always been about many things but has pretty much been all politics all the time for the past three months. Even so, once in a while all that handicapping and general outrage and idealism and hope crashes smack into the basic realities of what’s at stake here.
For example, just this month:
- I had a medical test which costs money, (and which not all insurance companies cover,) that found and dealt with something that was not important today but, if not detected, could someday have been way more important than I even want to think about.
- A friend I really admire was diagnosed with Lupus – costly and complicated to treat.
- Another friend’s child was born a month premature, miles away from home during a vacation. After some very scary post-delivery bleeding, she and her baby are fine now. Their health insurance guaranteed easy access to capable, coordinated care.
- A story appeared, in various forms in several papers, reporting "Many Cancer Patients Forgo Health Care Due to Soaring Cost of Medication" and including these other facts:
"25 percent of families with a cancer patient spent their lifetime savings for the treatment. The same survey said 10% of these families had to forego some basic needs like food, heat and housing" and
"20% of Americans have big problems paying their medical bills."
- Another, in newspapers and Scientific American, reported that "the United States has slipped from 24th to 29th in infant mortality rates in developed countries," meaning that 28 "first world" countries are doing better than we are in keeping newborn infants alive.
This is the reality in our country today. And that’s just one issue in just one month. The same is true for education, climate change and our basic civil rights. And that doesn’t count Iraq, Guantanamo, candidates who want to ban books, threatened legal access to contraception and other women’s rights issues, the growing income gap and the current terrifying economic crises.
I know you know this. As my rabbi likes to say, "I’m talking to myself here" but as we monitor polls and the endless talk show and newscast chatter, we need to remember. As I was awakened by a very lovely nurse offering me cranberry juice, with a view of colorful fall leaves on the trees outside the window of a clean, well-lit recovery room, the first thing that came into my mind was how lucky I was to be there. This election is about winners and losers and parties in control, yes. But even more, this time, it’s life and death.
Oh, and if you want to get upset about the campaign itself anyway, try this.
