http://movingrightalong.typepad.com/moving_right_along/2008/03/your-tax-dollar.htmlYour Tax Dollars At Work!
Love Thursday (which has been resurrected by Shutter Sister; thank
you, SS!) returns to Moving Right Along this week with a bang. A huge
ringing bang.
Look at the gift I have just been given. Well, maybe don't look if
you get icked out by such things. On the other hand, if you enjoy
looking at such things, click to enlarge by all means! It's a little
blurry, though. It's hard to take pictures of the back of your own
head even under the most ordinary circumstances.
Stapled incision from craniotomy.
Isn't it beautiful? It's one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever
been given. Actually, it's a lot of gifts, from a lot of people, and
it's going to take me quite some time to list them all out for you.
It may take me years. For today, though, in case the beauty is not
immediately obvious to you, let me just begin to explain.
One week ago today, I was given free brain surgery with all the
trimmings by a genuinely world-class team of kind and compassionate --
and highly specialized -- neurosurgical experts, courtesy of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I had come to the emergency room the
week before that highly altered and with a two-month-old headache that
just wouldn't quit. Turns out I had a brain tumor the size of a golf
ball.
Miraculous. I just showed up needing this insane amount of quite
expensive, complicated help, and you gave it to me, freely and
graciously, with exactly the same level of service and compassion I
would have gotten had I been the child of a foreign potentate brought
in on a private jet. (And I know this for a fact because I have
worked in local hospitals and personally served children of foreign
potentates. None received better care or more deference than I have
enjoyed in the last three weeks.)
So. Thank you, Massachusetts. Thanks to you and your subsidized
health care for the impecunious within our borders, I can read and
write today. This is especially impressive when you realize that I
could do neither one a little over two weeks ago.
Like most people, I have done nothing particular to deserve your help.
Like most people, I have also done nothing to deserve a brain tumor.
This stuff just happens to people, all kinds of people, all the time.
Like many people, I could never afford insurance to cover it. Never.
Even with the best private insurance I ever had, the amounts not
covered would have devastated me financially. And the confusing
paperwork and conflicting stories from the insurance company, plus the
collection calls from all the service providers'
automatically-summoned-after-X-number-of-days bill collectors would
have started within weeks of my surgery. Even with every responsible
measure of a responsible person in place to mitigate the fallout in
just such an event, this is how it usually goes for many many people,
maybe even most in this country, when something this big just happens
to them through no fault of their own.
Many of us have long been arguing that helping each other is exactly
what our collective resources as humans are for. Helping each other.
Not killing each other or trying to quantify each other's monetary
value. Thank you so much, Massachusetts, for being part of this
country that agrees.
So how 'bout it, rest of America?
So I'll bet you didn't realize this, but the whole argument about
socialized medicine? It boils down to love. Do you love America?
Great. Now do you love what America is made of, Americans? Do you
really? Well, how much?
Do we love this country and each other enough to figure out a way for
every single person in America to have what has just been given to me?
Or are we too busy judging and measuring and lying to each other
about what things really cost to make this kind of possibility a
reality for every single person?
Every single person deserves this level of help and service. Every
single one. I only got it because of luck, finding the bad thing at
the right time in the right place with an amazing surgeon and his team
just happening to be available to me right at this moment, strictly
the luck of the draw.
Oh, and because I live in Massachusetts.
In Massachusetts, we are often rude and cold in demeanor, careless of
the environment, and even atrocious drivers. You know what else we
do, though? Bottom line, we love one another enough individually and
conceptually to put our money where our politics, philosophies, and
religions are and really take care of each other, or at least to try.
Yes, if you live somewhere else in the country, it is very likely that
we pay higher taxes than you. Nobody likes paying taxes. But nobody
here likes people to die of treatable and preventable medical
conditions.*
As one who's been on the receiving end in such a big way this time, I
cannot express my gratitude. Thank you so much, Massachusetts, for
the amazing, beautiful gift.
I love you, too.
__________
* I don't pay taxes myself right now, personally, because I don't make
enough money at the moment, but I have, too, for many many years, and
barring catastrophe will again -- because I'm probably going to live.
Because my fellow citizens of the Commonwealth paid for it. Even
without the love, can you see purely economically how much better this
works than just telling people to "sink or swim," "you get what you
earn," and "those are the breaks"? Do you see? Even if you can't
feel the love, surely you can see the pragmatism? More healthy
citizens = bigger tax base. So simple.
Dare I say it seems like a no-brainer?
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