The "world's greatest deliberative body" is patting itself on the back for coming up with a filibuster-proof majority...to allow a floor debate on the health care bill. Wow, what an achievement. So now will we get to watch these great orators square off on this huge societal issue? Don't hold your breath.
The debate will devolve quickly into squabbles on deficit economics, abortion subsidies and whether or not illegal immigrants get care. But the BIG issue is the question that even the Democrats dare not articulate (except Wiener and Grayson in the House and Sanders in the Senate). The BIG issue is unfortunately a moral one. I am not usually a moralizer, but health care just has to be debated in this context.
A Jew gets mugged walking on a road outside Jerusalem - bloodied up, stripped and left for dead. After a bit a priest walks by, but crosses the street to avoid him. Ditto a temple assistant. But then a (you guessed it) lowly Samaritan stops and ministers to the victim, hoists him onto his donkey and takes him to the next town. This story, ladies and gentlemen, frames the ONLY question we should be asking each other in this debate. Should a helpless sick or injured American be given help, even at our cost, or left on their own?
A Harvard study released recently found that 45,000 Americans die annually due to lack of health insurance. That's about one every ten minutes.
Maybe this debate in the Senate should begin with a more theoretical referendum on whether it's ethically OK to leave people to die. If that results in a "sense of the Senate" that it's not OK to leave people to die, then maybe the next step would be a law that outlaws any existing statute that allows any institution (hospital, clinic, insurance company, etc) to leave people to die, ie: to deny medical care.
But you will never see the debate framed this way. And even the great Barack Obama lacks the courage to speak at this level of human reality. Only a very few legislators, the Kuciniches and Sanders's of the world, you know, those out-of-the-mainstream-kooks, would dare to talk like this. Are you surprised that they get next to no air time?
This is why I turn off the TV. I can't bear to watch.