They Will Kill Us All
A lot of people, including Steve Bates, have posted on the Tea Party response to uninsured people, i.e. let them die.
They should stop by their local movie theater and have a look at the new movie, Contagion. The thing about the movie is that the people at the Centers for Disease Control say the film is actually very accurate about what could happen.
If you look at the bird flu outbreak, or SARS, or AIDS, these things were spread around the world quickly because of air travel. The old days of stopping ships in the harbor and conducting health inspections before allowing people to come ashore are over, but that was the reason the US Public Health Service was established in 1798.
More than any other first world country, and many in the second world, the US is vulnerable to pandemics because of our lack of universal health care. People who can’t afford to go to a doctor are going to spread the disease. A lot of those people work in food service and retail. Health care is a national security issue.
People forget that the predecessor programs to the US Social Security System were implemented in Germany and Britain because the pool of men of draft age weren’t healthy enough to serve in the military.
September 17, 2011 23 Comments
