Guest View: Health care ‘for the rest of us’

I attended The Honorable Sam Farr’s periodic
”
town hall
”
meeting at the Veterans Memorial Building.
By Karen Lantz

I attended The Honorable Sam Farr’s periodic “town hall” meeting at the Veterans Memorial Building. Instead of the usual calm and reasoned questioning by concerned citizens, it regrettably was the case that, as a teacher being shouted down had to remind certain “klass klowns,” “If you were in my CLASS, I’d have to send some of you to the PRINCIPAL!” Though his 6 p.m. meeting normally would have ended, after a long day’s work, at 8 p.m., Congressman Farr worked until 9:30 to politely and patiently answer often-abusive questions, almost all of them about our nation’s spiraling health-care crisis, until every citizen who had gotten up when he invited questions had spoken his peace AND had his questions answered.

The mostly friendly crowd seemed to appreciate that Sam avoided tit-for-tat responses to the hurtful insults (for example, ignorantly and without a shred of evidence yelling that Sam, a highly-respected, hard-working public servant, was a “thief!”). He “turned the other cheek” despite the outrageous shouts and cat calls caused by Internet fanatics and right-wing radio talk-show hosts who ARE lining THEIR pockets during this health-care crisis by selling fear and hysteria and inciting well-meaning listeners to riot.

(For your readers who profess a faith other than Christianity, “turn the other cheek” is the same philosophy as Ghandi’s “If we all demanded an eye for an eye, soon the whole world would be blind.”)

Congressman Farr, like the American Medical Association, which speaks for most doctors in this country, wants President Obama’s health insurance reform – “a kind of MEDICARE for the REST of us” – because each year America spends a few THOUSAND dollars more per person than any other industrialized country on health care, but we rank 39th out of those 40 countries in RESULTS. Health care costs are going up 8 percent a year, so our monthly insurance premiums and co-pays are skyrocketing, too. Employers and employees share the same concern: year after year, they have to CHOOSE to EITHER keep health insurance coverage OR have cost-of-living adjustments so wages keep up with inflation. Paychecks are shrinking when adjusted for inflation, yet America can’t compete in the world economy when our costs are so much higher than those of our competitors. Unemployment is an unacceptable 9.4 percent. As the old saying goes, “Something’s GOTTA give.”

One by one, Sam put to rest misconceptions planted by those who profit by spreading unfounded fears: no, NON-Governor Palin, there will be no “death panels” deciding whether to put us to sleep against our will, the way we agonize over our aging pets. Secondly, illegal immigrants will NOT get a “free ride”. Third, the government will NOT come between you and your doctor. (In fact, just ask your doctor: NOTHING comes between you and your doctor like the profit-driven insurance company saying they won’t pay his hard-earned bill.) 

As Congressman Farr noted, requiring people – who won’t pay a doctor for an inexpensive office visit which would PREVENT catastrophic illness, but who flood our expensive emergency rooms for free after car accidents or if they get runny noses – to buy health insurance is no more “socialism” than requiring them to buy CAR insurance is. As Sam also pointed out, there are SOME things, like the MILITARY, which we have to reluctantly turn to the government of a free-market economy like ours to provide. (Ironically, the “klass klowns” at the town hall meeting tried to drown out with screams of “SOCIALISM!” the high school advanced-placement social studies teacher who was the one person in the building who BEST KNEW what “socialism” IS – and is NOT; and the yahoos shouting “FREEDOM!” should have respected HER freedom – of SPEECH, the way she and Congressman Farr respected THEIRS and were SILENT when THEY stepped up to the microphone to have THEIR say.)

In conclusion, Congressman Farr, who could make much MORE money in a job that involves a lot LESS abuse and aggravation, is to be COMMENDED, (not rudely SHOUTED DOWN by a handful of well-meaning but misled “klass klowns”), for his common-sense recognition that, if we are to resolve America’s LITERALLY life-and-death health care crisis, as Ben Franklin said when he signed the Declaration of Independence, “If we don’t all hang TOGETHER, we’ll surely all hang SEPARATELY!”

Karen Lantz is a Hollister resident.