Health care

Yesterday was the Climate Rally in Buffalo. Other cities had their rallies and protests also.

I was at home. Sick. I have some sort of dry, hacking cough with this gross yellow stuff that I keep spitting out. (I worked on a farm in high school. Whenever I coughed something up, the old man made me spit it out. “Your body's trying to get that garbage out of you – spit it out. “ He was rarely, if ever sick and took little medication to combat illness. Those cigarettes did a number on him though, sadly. )

In the school where I work a student came in to school with the whooping cough. I don't know if his parents have health insurance or if they have sick/family days that they can use to take care of a sick child. (The benefits of a union.) They took him to the hospital only after he broke 2 ribs and pulled muscles in his chest. He is now wearing some sort of brace around his back and chest to help him heal and is taking some sort of anti-viral to combat the whooping cough.

And he still has a dry, hacking cough.

A cough that I am hearing in other students and myself.

Questions:

If his parents had health insurance, would they have taken him to the hospital sooner?

If his parents had family leave time, would they have been able to stay home and take care of him with out worrying about being able to make ends meet?

If the place(s) his parents worked had unions, would they be able to negotiate for these benefits? (And would the bosses be worried bout someone coming in sick and shutting down the whole enterprise? Sick people can spread illness.)

American can do better than this.

Americans deserve to be able to have unions. First Amendment. Freedom of association/ redress of grievances. (And f a person doesn't want to belong, they don't get the benefits. Try working out in a health club without a membership.)

Americans deserve quality health care without worrying about breaking the bank. Other countries have forms of single payer / public option systems and they do the same job for less. (Cost savings? Any business should be behind that. It's a no brainer.)

American's deserve family sick leave. Supposedly we are a Christian nation and family is a central part of the faith. I keep hearing “family comes first” from social conservatives. Yet we provide nothing and how many families teeter on the brink of bankruptcy because of this?

We're supposed to be better than this.

We're not.

What exactly are we supposed to be thankful for?