When Chemists Attack

During Spring Break, I watched Frontline’s “Sick Around The World”. It’s a very good program, showing how several other countries provide their citizens with universal access to care. Strengths and weaknesses of each country’s program are presented. And if you’re tired of hearing about France and Canada, you won’t be bored with this program – France and Canada are not on the show!

The most interesting part of the show for me was the last segment – devoted to Switzerland.

At the beginning of the segment, Frontline interviewed a member of Switzerland’s Social Democratic party. They’re a left-wing party, and you’d expect them to support universal health care – even if it led to a system with a large amount of government involvement or oversight.

But then the focus shifted to Pascal Couchepin, a member of an opposing party – the Free Democratic Party. This party values “the free market, free trade, economic deregulation and the rule of law“. This sounds considerably less left-wing, and almost mirrors what our Republicans say they stand for. So what does Couchepin have to say about universal access to care?

For the Swiss, whether you are right or left doesn’t matter; I think there is a consensus on that. We want that every [one] of our citizen[s] can get the best medical treatment when they need it. …

Later, when discussing what the Swiss people thought about access to care:

Everybody has a right to health care.

And when asked about whether a free-market system could be relied on to provide health care…

No, I don’t think so. If you do that, you will lose solidarity and equal access for everybody. […] We think that is a basic value of living in our society.

“A basic value of living in our society.” That made me think – why don’t we have universal access to quality health care in this country? We’re certainly not too poor to afford a good health system. So what’s wrong with America?

Perhaps it’s a moral failing of our society. We do not provide universal access to care because we do not value life. Or, at least, we do not value life nearly as much as we’d like to think we do.

Consider that on the one hand, some of us will go to great lengths to prevent a woman from having access to birth control or abortion. “We value life“, these people – usually Christian “values voters” – say. But these people don’t demand of their lawmakers that these valued lives have adequate health care. (It’s an issue that isn’t even on the radar with the Republicans these folks almost reflexively vote for!) “Values voters” have, seemingly, no problem with the fact that American families can be ruined because a family member has the misfortune of getting sick. To those folks, I recommend a little reading: Matthew 25, verses 34-40.

To the rest of us, I’ll simply say that universal care isn’t just an economic issue – though it does seem to save money in other countries. It’s a moral issue. It’s simply the right thing to do.

South Carolina has just about finished up with the primaries on both sides, and on the Democratic side, Obama crushed Clinton. more than doubling her vote count.288,820 to 138,758 (with 98% reporting in).

About the only thing that surprises me about these results is the magnitude of Obama’s win.  This election wasn’t even close. According to CNN’s exit polls, lots of people liked Obama: men, women, young folks, black folks, churchgoers, the non-religious. Clinton did best among old people, and Edwards was a hit with white people over 30.

520,627+ came out to vote for one of the Democratic candidates.  That’s a pretty nice turnout for this red state.  Compare to the Republican numbers: 442,918 total votes. Obama alone got more voters to come out for him than both leading Republicans (McCain and Huckabee) put together.  That goes along with what I’ve been seeing in my community – which is both quite conservative and quite religious. People are excited about the Democratic candidates. The Republican field is simply uninspiring – even to a state as red as South Carolina.

From the New York Times science section:

Although it’s impossible to calculate the pain that terrorist attacks inflict on victims and society, when statisticians look at cold numbers, they have variously estimated the chances of the average person dying in America at the hands of international terrorists to be comparable to the risk of dying from eating peanuts, being struck by an asteroid or drowning in a toilet.

(emphasis mine)

The rest of the article is more serious, telling you that panicking over terrorism might hurt you – citing an increased risk of heart problems among the more fearful.

Still, though, I can’t help but wonder if upcoming political ads might feature one of the presidential hopefuls boldly announcing his plan to protect us from our toilets.

“We’ll flush them over there so we don’t have to flush them here!”

It’s a week old, but The State has an article up about what South Carolina’s GOP voters are most worried about in this election cycle. Apparently, the big issue is illegal immigration.

Polls have shown immigration is more important to Republican voters in South Carolina than it is to Democrats. In fact, S.C. GOP backers have made immigration their top issue in choosing a president.

What do South Carolina Republicans have to say about the issue?

“This is the new Confederate flag issue in South Carolina on the Republican side,” said Neal Thigpen, a political science professor at Francis Marion University and a Republican.

The new Confederate flag issue? Oh, dear.
By rallying their voters around immigration, it’s as if the Republicans are admitting that they’ve got nothing worthwhile to offer on health care, or the war in Iraq, or education, or the economy, or … you name it. Instead, they’ll bravely protect us from Dora and Diego.

The fast growth is something South Carolinians notice in their daily activities whether they see Hispanics at the grocery store or working on a neighbor’s roof, Thigpen said. They begin to wonder if another ethnic group is taking over.

Wow. Just … wow.

It looks like we’ve just unleashed a whole boatload of stupidity here in South Carolina:

Kristin Maguire of Clemson was elected today to be the leader of the state Board of Education in 2009.

Maguire, who teaches her four daughters at home, was nominated from the floor during the panel’s regularly scheduled monthly meeting.

Who’s to blame? I blame the whole board – who elected Maguire via voice vote. I can only hope we regain some sense in South Carolina before my own daughter is old enough to attend school.

Sheesh.

Why is this a problem, aside from the obvious? See the causes Maguire supports here.

(Via the Rev BigDumbChimp)

Via Think Progress, here’s an ad that makes you think a bit about our health care system:

If he were anyone else, he’d probably be dead by now. The patient’s history and prognosis were grim: four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, angioplasty, an implanted defibrillator and now an emergency procedure to treat an irregular heartbeat. For millions of Americans, this might be a death sentence. For [him], it was just another medical treatment. And it cost him very little.

Who’s “he”?  If you didn’t click the link to the ad, “he” is Vice President Dick Cheney, who likely doesn’t have a fraction of the trouble you or I do getting access to health care.  Or paying the avalanche of bills that come after.

The rest of the ad talks about a house bill proposing a single-payer health care system for the US.   While I don’t think we’ll get single payer in the very near future, it seems like a good thing to work towards.   We should be ashamed – as a society – that any American has to go without health care.