Health care should be for the people

As I struggle to wrap my head around the appalling healthcare bill passed by the House, I have to wonder what happened to “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Instead, we now have “government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.”

The reason we have not moved to universal health care is because of the insurance company lobbyists who want to keep making billions in profit and the 1 percent who don’t want to pay higher taxes, thus allowing the government to provide healthcare to everyone. The steps that led to this debacle began in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. Promising the benefits would “trickle down,” our elected representatives started the insidious process of granting tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations. They also dismantled the regulations and programs put in place after 1930 to make sure that the Great Depression would never happen again.

From 1980 to now, GDP has continued to grow, but the financial benefits have all gone to the wealthy. The strong, vibrant middle class, which had been sharing in GDP growth from 1930 to 1980, has all but disappeared. Unfortunately, our current administration continues to believe in “trickle down,” even though history has shown it does not work.

So what do we, the people, do? We insist that Congress reject this healthcare disaster and work to give us universal healthcare. We also demand better from our representatives, and in 2018 and 2020 we perform our most important civic duty – we vote. And this time we vote for someone who will put people before corporations. We can get back to “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” And we can make American decent and kind again.

This story was originally published May 12, 2017 at 4:15 PM with the headline "Health care should be for the people."