The author
Posted on 04/21/2014 9:25:54 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
With only one day left to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, opponents are still removing logic and common sense from arguments that tout the ACA as unsound. Basically, they don’t want to subsidize insurance premiums for Americans on the government exchange.
This debate, seen as another attempt to gut the law, comes weeks after the Congressional Budget Office released a report that says the ACA, or Obamacare, would nix 2.3 million jobs. According to some, this would shake the foundation of the American economy. Most recently, a divided federal appeals judge said it was “an unmitigated disaster.”
Really?
Before we move into hyperbole, we should examine the drawn-out brouhaha (more than 50 attempts to repeal it) over the ACA in an uncomfortable context.
The health care law, otherwise known as Obamacare, allows uninsured people—mostly poor whites, the elderly and people of color—access to health insurance. The main arguments against it are that universal healthcare—found in other developed countries, is too costly for America—the richest nation on the planet. And Americans will become lazy and work less because they have access to healthcare.
Sounds ludicrous? It is.
But I would urge some opponents of universal healthcare to consider the life of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman whose cells were taken without her consent and then used to develop cures for polio, vitro fertilization and other vital scientific breakthroughs in science.
This fascinating topic was recently discussed at the Avon Free Public Library. Two of the Lacks family members participated in the discussion. The series offered an opportunity to explore not just health, ethics and race but the healthcare industry itself.
For more than 60 years, the healthcare industry made billions from Lacks’ cells. And today the Lacks family still wonders why their mother’s immortal cells did so much for science, and they can’t afford health insurance. After all, some in the Lacks family argue, their mother’s He-La cells benefited “the whole world and all they got was her Bible and medical records.”
The story of Henrietta Lacks’ immortal cells is both amazing and unsettling. And the question of how race played into her healthcare is not difficult for some of us to answer. That’s because we know that race is a central theme in America. And it is well established that race affects healthcare delivery and outcomes.
This is not an attempt at what some people would call “race hustling.” It’s about highlighting certain facts in American history. I’m aware that many Americans have not studied U.S. history. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us who did should acquiesce to them.
Consider this: In 1951, a scientist at Johns Hopkins took slices of the woman’s tumor and decided to grow them, so he could “figure out the causes of cancer.” This is long after doctors found a dime-size tumor on her cervix. They kept sending her home until she protested and begged for admittance, so she could be treated. By then, her body was riddled with cancer.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a book based on the Lacks family, details the encounter. And people are rightfully asking whether this family is owed something for thier contribution to humankind. This is a good conversation to have amid the tired healthcare debate over whether to repeal Obamacare.
I think giving access to healthcare for the Lacks family and others in similar situations should be favorable over reparations. At least, this is one way of looking at it. Or perhaps it’s time Americans opposed to Obamacare choose: universal healthcare or reparations?
Some would argue for both.
Interestingly and ironically, the same argument used for not paying reparations has been used in the Lacks family’s case. Many are quick to offer statements and questions like: It’s impossible to calculate how much money is owed. Those who did the crime did their time on earth and died. And who would pay?
In both cases, the consequences of those past actions by individuals and institutions still linger. The Lacks story, among many, illustrates the need for universal healthcare in America.
Americans should consider universal healthcare as a human rights issue, or think of universal healthcare as payback for all the historical wrongs done not just to the Lacks family for “the good of humankind” but to all those other wrongs done in the name of science.
The most famous one in public memory is the Tuskegee Syphilis study, which began in 1932 and ran until 1972. In this study, the United States Public Health Service conducted an experiment in watching black men died from syphilis. The doctors didn’t tell these men they had syphilis. And they didn’t get healthcare. This story, like many, illustrates black oppression and medical neglect.
The Tuskegee case is more prominent, however, because it happened to black men. But there are other lesser-known atrocities, which happened to black women. Besides the Lacks case, we have the notorious J. Marion Sims, the so-called father of gynecology who used enslaved African women as experimental subjects.
These stories are known because the records exist. And unless we want to have more reasons to dig up America’s past medical atrocities, we should perhaps silence the chatter about repealing Obamacare.
If talk about a repeal of Obamacare persists, we should juxtapose that discussion with a public debate about reparations.
I’m so ready for that.
The author
My offer is this, nothing.
The government is already paying reparations. It’s called EBT cards at Walmart.
starving the monkeys. great book.
Free health care is a birthright because my ancestors were discriminated against. A ludicrous argument.
I put nothing past the race merchants these days. I’m ready for the debate she wants. Bring it on!
Why can’t we have both?, said nobody ever.
Oops, it’s supposed to be “said no sane person ever”.
There were only six attempts to repeal it, as I recall.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3134290/posts
As if reparations will make a difference.
What do you think blacks will do with the money? Spend it....and the money winds up right where it was before, and they will be exactly where they were before.
What the heck is a divided judge? Do you draw and quarter you now if you say anything bad about Zero-care? Even if they do, I think I would have called him a "soon to be divided judge", since I assume he said that before they divided him.
Well, I must admit, after the fiasco that Zero-care's been so far, I do kinda feel like I deserve some reparations for having to treat idiocy, enacted illegally by idiots, as if it were a real law.
Imagine if there were TrayMar cells?
Do we want to have thousands more Tuskegee Experiments?
How about "impeachment" and "prison"?
Choose one Soviet model for Amerikstan, she means.
I believe in reparations. I own several thousand rounds of them....
What a pile of nonsensical goofball arguments.
“The health care law, otherwise known as Obamacare, allows uninsured people—mostly poor whites, the elderly and people of color—access to health insurance. The main arguments against it are that universal healthcare—found in other developed countries, is too costly for America—the richest nation on the planet. And Americans will become lazy and work less because they have access to healthcare.”
No, as usual, the author doesn’t have the intellectual depth nor honesty to examine the simple and proven versus the arcane and emphemeral. The arguments against it are that 1: the government screws up everything it touches, 2: ALL government programs are inevitably gamed by insiders. This completely ignores that there is no logical nor even sentential connection between “universal healthcare being too expensive” and “Americans will become lazy”. She forget the part about “turnips will dance the hully-gully in their argyle socks”. She would really have to improve her argument to come up to “stupid”, but I like the racial thing thrown in there, she should have said “shiftless”, that’s the race-trigger word.
So allllllll these people now have access to “healthcare coverage”, but so many doctors and hospitals will not accept the insurance provided by 0bamacare. So you win some and you lose some. It isn’t quite the coverage that was touted, was it? That the president shredded his own credibility lying his ass off over the thing, that’s......just gotta be OK.
“Reparations” is that we made one of the greatest enemies of the US ever the president. And virtually every American is laying for it. He’s the one who gets the
vacays in Martha’s Vineyard. Ask him for your reparations, you little skink.
What a moronic , false dichotomy, illogical stream of nonsense.
The author must have majored in Black Studies , because Logic certainly wasn’t in the curriculum.
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