What all the Fuss is About: Universal Healthcare and Who is Against It

A couple weeks ago we saw news coverage of seemingly out of control protestors pushing their way into senator-organized town hall meetings to fight against Universal Health Care. We have seen footage of protestors with signs adorned with swastikas, of protestors sporting weapons at the public meetings of congress members and our president. Ugly caricatures have been drawn of Obama and elaborate stories about "death panels" and state-sponsored medical neglect of the sick have circulated.

I have personally received numerous alarmist emails and seen inflammatory ad campaigns portraying universal health care as the newest evil in the land. Who is afraid of free healthcare exactly?

If all of this outcry was coming from the citizenry of this country it would be something to worry about. I might begin to wonder if perhaps somehow giving everybody free medical care could be detrimental in some way.

But this outcry is not coming from American citizens. These  protests and these ad campaigns have not been organized by grassroots organizations despite the misleading rhetoric to that effect. These anti-Universal Healthcare campaigns have been organized and funded by those likely to be harmed by the elimination of medicine-for-profit- the corporate health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies. These protests are all about Big Business making big money off of sick people. 

They have a reason to be scared. Their bottom line is at stake.  The rest of us- those of us who will be receiving free medical care- have nothing to fear. Who knows, we might actually be able to get better without going broke for a change. Imagine that.

We are the only industrialized country in the world who practices medicine-for-profit.  In other words, we are the only country among those who can afford to offer its citizenry free healthcare who doesn't.  

Its time we caught up with the rest of the Industrialized world, people. Its time we started taking care of our sick. Its time we started putting the well-being of our citizenry before the profit margin of corporations.