Little Words Mean Life or Death: Framing Health Care

[babylonsister]

Little Words Mean Life or Death: Framing Health Care
By: Glenn W. Smith Sunday May 10, 2009 9:30 am

"Little words can mean death or life to someone."

-Electra, in Sophocles' tragedy, Electra.

People die who could be saved. People suffer who could recover. Those are the consequences of the private insurance-based health care system in America today.

We can reform the system at little cost and no risk to our own health, saving hundreds of thousands or millions of lives and medically treating millions more who go untreated.

I can't write it any plainer than that. The facts are not in dispute. The U.S. ranks last in measurements of citizen health among the six top industrialized nations. So how do insurance industry hirelings (otherwise known as conservative Republicans) make their case against health care reform? How do they justify this inhuman, deadly status quo?

Conservative propagandist Frank Luntz tells them how. Lie. Am I overstating it to claim that such lies, if successful, will cause death and harm to millions? No.

In the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles' play from which the epigram above is drawn, Orestes justifies a deception with these "little words":

Can a mere story be evil? No of course not - so long as it pays in the end.

Is there a more concise way of defining the anti-ethic that seems to drive so much of our American political life? Is it not how the mainstream media assesses candidates and officeholders? Is it not how politicians assess themselves? Is it not what makes it possible for a nation to promote death and suffering to enrich and empower a few insurance executives and the politicians they keep in their servants' quarters?

more...

http://firedoglake.com/2009/05/10/little-words-mean-life-or-death-framing-health-care/

[KT2000]

1. The debate must include

people owning up to those left behind. It is long past time that those against health care for all explain their justification for allowing life to some and not to others.