The health care debate has raised consciences around the United States. The once fuzzy notion of single payer has been replaced with the solid icon of an efficient system of administration (typically one layer) that handles the finances for health care; instead of the thousands of disparate administrators in thousands of companies, trying to placate thousands of insurance companies. Single Payer is as American and efficient as Sam Walton’s concepts for mass marketing and mass provisioning. There are still the faint and tired calls from the ridiculous republicans that this is socialism – which to them is automatically of the Devil’s spawn. Please! The conservatives also have an archaic and preposterous knee jerk reaction to the elegant model that is Single Payer. Conservatives always demonstrate an undeniable and collective evidence of all their poor attempts in the past to avail themselves to the American K-12 educational system.
While we adults re-imagine health care into a system that is cost efficient and overflows with all the benefits of a vigorous and healthy citizenry, let us not stop there. Jump with me to the other side of the fold.
Universal Health care with Single Payer is a progressive ideal and a goal for our great country. As we have marched through the American centuries from our founding, we have adopted several ‘American’ systems. First, we were agrarian, then industrial; ending in a post-industrial electronics-connected economy and now, we are mainly service driven with a worldwide communications system that is as robust as it is fast.
It is now time for the flowering of an American system that has been waiting for the proper infrastructure and support systems that we now enjoy. As capitalism has done its job and to get us here, it is time for capitalism to retire and let the work of the people continue. Let the people be free of a system that concentrates wealth. Let the people be free of work that alienates them from the four canons of true socialism.
As we re-imagine our America in the 21st century, we look to other universals. We look forward to the work to install them and then to fully embrace them.
These are the 21st century American Universal Rights
• Food
• Water
• Clothing
• Shelter
• Communications
• Computation
• Transportation
• Healthcare
• Jobs
We the people will have a right to these universals in a single payer framework if so required. While all of these universals are a requirement for a progressive life, the last is the most important. We want and we need jobs that interest us, engage us, fulfill us, and then allow us to receive a fair stipend; so that we may use that money to augment any of our other universals.
While we fight the on-going good battles for Universal Health care, let us not lose sight of the war that we are engaged in: putting down capitalism, once and for all (and thanking her for our arrival here), but then to begin the work to install and instill the rest of our American Universal Rights.
We have so much to look forward to in the coming century. I know our children will be so proud of what we can hand them as they carry on in the progressive American Way in their time.
Who knows what the Americans of the 22nd or 23rd century will require? All we know, is what we know, that is what we need now. I pray for our future generations, that they will amend the American way to be something they are proud of … as proud as we are, as we work and fight our way towards our American Universal Rights.