A Memorial Day Wish

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I am pondering of my dad right now. He handed a couple of many years back again, but he was a veteran. He was in the Fight of the Bulge. Compared with numerous some others, he did arrive again. He lived into his nineties. Toward the conclusion of his daily life, he essential long-expression treatment. He experienced a coverage, one he paid out into for a long time, that was supposed to include it, but really didn’t. (I have the NYSUT catastrophic clinical unexpected emergency insurance policies, and I’m acutely conscious that won’t deal with it both.) 

Towards the finish of my dad’s daily life, his wife was wanting into divesting him of his property and obtaining him into Medicaid so she would not get rid of her house paying care facility bills. In the meantime, my friend’s grandmother in Canada got conclusion-of-existence treatment from the governing administration with no out-of-pocket cost.

When I was a good deal young, my friend’s father had to market his property to shell out for his wife’s clinical charges. I you should not recall accurately what was erroneous with her, but I keep in mind she misplaced her leg and lingered for a extensive even though. When she at last passed, the father had to shift into the basement of one particular of his grown sons. He failed to appear to like it there extremely substantially. I know that because one particular Xmas Eve he blew his head off with a pistol. This was the first time I recognized a little something was pretty wrong with our health treatment method.

After, I experienced a occupation actively playing fiddle in a bluegrass band in a smaller theater in Pennsylvania. We ended up opening for a identify band significantly even larger than we had been. I keep in mind there were 4 fellas in the band, and a few of them were being actually chubby. Only the banjo participant was not. They sent us all to lunch in a nearby cafe, and I sat with him. I keep in mind we both purchased Reuben sandwiches.

That was a Saturday. The subsequent Tuesday, this banjo participant experienced chest pains. Taking part in banjo is not usually a really lucrative occupation, and this distinct banjo player, of study course, had no health and fitness insurance. He thought about likely to the ER, but also had to assume about the hundreds of bucks that pay a visit to would have charge him. (I know for a reality he did not make thousands that Saturday night. The singer probably compensated him sideman wages, regardless of what they may be.) He determined to journey it out, but the trip did not go well. He died of a coronary heart assault later that working day.

In the course of the several years, I have viewed musical heroes of mine get sick. Frequently, I would see people today giving advantage live shows for their well being care. In some cases I might contribute to GoFundMe or related items for musicians I knew who’d gotten in hassle. These artists I highly regarded, and possible ones you respect way too, ought to have been lined somehow. In Canada they all are. In truth, anybody functioning in a Taco Bell in Canada has entire well being protection, as they need to. I you should not imagine anyone deserves to have health treatment because their careers are additional critical, prestigious, or superior-spending. I believe anyone needs and warrants health and fitness treatment. As for charges, it would unquestionably be more affordable in the long run to ensure it for all and reduce out the parasitical non-public well being care businesses.

It’s a ethical very important that we give wellbeing treatment to all, 1 way or a different. I not too long ago read through a ebook called The Sum of Us, by Heather McGhee, that examines our society. A core query McGhee poses is, “Why can not we have great factors?” The response, in brief, is that The us presents advantages as a zero-sum activity. Oh, if we have that, then those undesirable folks (read individuals of color) will get it, and by some means you can expect to shed something. So, white people today really don’t get it both, no a person receives it at all, and we are all by some means losers. Bigots can congratulate them selves for preserving independence, whatever the hell that is, and Tucker Carlson will urge them to be vigilant in guarding it. 

UFT has a placement on one-payer. As I understand it, we oppose the New York Overall health Act (NYHA) since its expenditure would someway slash into instruction funding, or interfere with positive aspects we by now have. This is odd, since I voted for a resolution that said, albeit in past tense, that we supported the 2015 NYHA. It does go on to condition that we help national solitary payer. I don’t agree with the recent posture on NYHA. If we have troubles, we should negotiate with the sponsors of the invoice and correct whatever the concerns may perhaps be. We are union. Union must be in the enterprise of rising all boats, not stating, “Our boat is fantastic and yours can sink for all we care.”

I have listened to UFT President Michael Mulgrew say on far more than one occasion that we choose a federal health care system, and that we aid that strategy. Even with that, I’m horrified to uncover the UFT on this list of corporations that oppose single-payer. This distinct web-site mischaracterizes Canadian health care, and plainly indicates that any governing administration-run wellbeing treatment plan would be a failure. In spite of that, I see a completely no nation with common care shifting towards a US design. And Medicare belies that.

Of course, I like my wellness care. That stated, I am not insane about the copays. I am not insane about having doctors convey to me they’ve dropped my insurance policy. My buddies and family in Canada never have that challenge, they do not have insane hold out instances, and they really don’t envy us at all. I am positive gazillionaires in Canada and in other places can fly in and pay back hundreds of countless numbers of pounds for the finest professionals in the United States. Still, I am a US resident with comparatively superb wellbeing treatment, and I can’t afford that both.

People today reading that website could interpret the UFT to be an organization whose policy is, “We have ours, so screw you.” That’s essentially an anti-union position. In reality, it truly is an anti-human position. I’d also argue that our brave veterans did not give their lives so people today could go bankrupt around catastrophic health-related emergency, one thing that occurs in no other produced state I know of. We owe it to their memory, and we owe it to our peers and small children to leave them anything much better than this. 

Regardless of what objections there might be to NYS one payer, we can requested that they be resolved. And even if they aren’t, we need to get our identify the hell off that checklist. With our title there, we search like every single disingenous GOP politician from Trump on down.

It truly is not a excellent look for the most significant teacher community in the nation.

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