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If you are planning to rabble-rouse at a town meeting in your area on health care, I would like you to keep a couple of things in mind. First off, you can scream all you want about getting your country back. If that remark means you would rather have George W. Bush in the White House, you should move to another country. You lost the last election.
If you think repeating the bumper-sticker slogans of Glenn Beck qualifies as intelligent debate on reforming health insurance, you need to change the channel once in a while and begin reading newspapers again. Beck is an entertainer who gets big bucks to rile you up. He couldn’t even win a debate with Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg on "The View," for goodness sake.
If you think giving you a choice between a public option and various private insurance companies is "socialism," you need to go back to school and take a course on economics.
If you are against "government-run programs," but don’t want the politicians to touch your Medicare, then you must write on the blackboard 100 times, "Medicare is a government-run program."
If you think we have the best health care in the world, then why is France rated No. 1, while we are 37th, behind Britain (who does have socialized medicine) and Canada, which is now viewed by you as some kind of third-world country? Take heart, though, we are rated just ahead of Slovenia. Incidentally, if you are a female, you should try getting your annual mammography in less than 16 months in America, the citadel of health care.
If you are one of those patriots who believe you shouldn’t have to worry about 47,000,000 people being uninsured in this great country of ours, then you should have to go to an emergency room just once in your life and wait 12 hours to be treated. The next time your uninsured child needs medical attention, try calling Rush Limbaugh.
If you’re afraid "government bureaucrats" will be making life-and-death decisions for you, then consider it is the profit-making health-insurance bureaucrats who are currently making the decisions for you. Ever had a medical procedure denied by your friendly agent at Blue Cross? Call Sean Hannity for help.
If you want to keep your health coverage just the way it is, then you have to learn about the increasing costs that threaten to take over the federal budget. Sweetheart, your coverage either won’t be here in five to 10 years or you won’t be able to afford it. Ask yourself why it is Medicare — our government-run system — has administrative costs less than 3 percent while private health insurance is running at about 30 percent? They both do the same thing: pay claims. While you are at it, ask yourself why those strange foreigners like France and Canada and just about every other industrialized nation are able to offer universal health care for a fraction of what our health care costs and are more efficient and effective in preventing sickness?
Ask the Republicans in Congress and the super-right wing patriotic talk-show hosts why it is we in America can’t cover all our citizens while other industrialized nations can. And while you are at it, call up Hannity and tell him, "you’re a great American, Sean." Maybe he will give you two tickets to his next "freedom" concert.
If you are worried the Obama administration is spending too much, then consider once the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to just about zero, the only known way to get out of a recession is for the government to spend money. If you are scratching your head wondering what or who the Federal Reserve is, then it is really time to take some night courses before you disrupt the next town hall meeting. Where were you when Bush came up with a drug program under Medicare without figuring out a way to pay for it? Were you just as upset when the Bush Administration tax cuts for the wealthy cost us a trillion dollars? At least Obama is insisting any new program pay for itself.
Finally, if you’re one of those who are still questioning whether Obama was born in this country, Hawaii is part of our country. Please look it up.
It is swell you attend town hall meetings because that is what a good citizen does. What a good citizen does not do is shout down anyone that doesn’t agree with him or her or hang their Congressional representative in effigy or make death threats. If you want your representative to listen to you, then be courteous and start listening to him or her. You might just learn something.
Good luck, and see you at the next town hall meeting.
