Good Public Behavior

by: Natasha Chart

Sun Jun 07, 2009 at 14:00

McConnell was very worried about the health of the insurance companies. I'm more worried that there are Americans who have to divorce to get treatment for life-threatening conditions. I'm more worried that with the onslaught of job losses and high long-term unemployment, a lot more of us are going to wake up in Indonesia one day:

... But four years ago, Ani told me, she had developed rheumatism in her left knee and it got so painful she just could not work any more.

Then her elderly mother was taken ill, Ani had to return to the village to look after her and when the mother had to go to hospital for over a month, Ani had to find the money to pay.

Then Kado had a stroke which meant yet more medical bills. The house in Jakarta, the symbol of all she had achieved, had to be sold. ...

And that was the end of Ani and Kado's middle class life that they'd won from their hard work after starting out in a poor, rural village.

They saved, the scrimped, they did everything that anyone is supposed to do to get ahead in any country. Their dreams are in ashes now because, well, people get sick.

We're not immortal. We can break, and usually do.

It could be easy to dismiss a story from developing Indonesia as irrelevant to our circumstances, but stories like that, and worse, happen in the US all the time. It just makes a country look bad, though, much in the way that it can make a family look bad when their relatives end up on the street.

Neither the arrogance of those who think we can control every circumstance of our lives, nor the disdain of those who want us to collectively walk away from those of our human family who can only contribute their company to the rest of us anymore.

This would be regarded as horrible personal behavior in every culture that hasn't descended into all out civil war. Abandoning all responsibility towards children, weak grandparents, injured spouses or siblings is behavior requiring explanation. You better have had literally no money, some outrageous personal falling out, have given over their care to someone else - or risk being seen as a bad person.

I'm not opposed to a judicious use of shaming to pressure our elected officials to give us a robust public insurance option, one that stops families feeling forced to sacrifice their futures so they can enjoy each other's company for a little longer. Or failing that, forcing elected officials to give up their public health insurance and go out on the individual market themselves, so they can really see.