...In which case it's a little like the Mafia.
I woke up around 6 or 7 days ago with sensation of extreme fullness, slight pain, and total deafness or white noise in my right ear. I had been using an unusually supple pair of ear plugs to block out the chirping of some birds that have camped out in a tree outside my home and begin chirping very early some mornings (as early as ten-to-four one morning, if you can believe it).
To make a long story short, after no improvement after several days, and believing I might have somehow popped an eardrum, I visited an ear-nose-throat guy today. Using a hand-held device (I'm sure you've all seen them at every single physical you've had since you were all kids) he peaked in my ears, and then with what I can only describe as a high-powered water pistol, he blasted a huge gob of ear wax out of the offending ear. Eureka! My hearing had returned, good as ever.
The peaking-in-the-ears + hydro-ear-blast took no more than one minute to complete. Probably less than 30 seconds, in fact. And teaching someone all they need to know to be able to do what he did for me must require no more than two minutes. But the cost for this doctor's visit for someone without health insurance is $125!!! Succumbing to my regrettable social conditioning that leaves important battles unfought, I didn't protest the bill, and settled for being satisfied with leaving the doctor's old-mannish demeanor undisturbed and being happy with the return of my auditory senses. But the injustice was in the back of my mind, and in retrospect, impossible to ignore. Even the doctor seemed a bit embarassed when (forgetting the quoted cost for the visit) I asked him what I owed him. Think about all the people out there- for a poor person, $125 is a hell of a lot of work!
We need to do something about getting a national health care system so that people do not have to pay $125 when the hearing in one of their ears disappears. If you want poor people to improve themselves, nothing will do it like their being able to hear what their employers, kids, and job interviewers are saying because they were able to get the ear-wax-removal procedure that really should only cost a couple of bucks.
In this conversation, we are not interested about what the Republicans will say. They of course will make the silly remarks that are not-at-all answers to a problem, and are by now typical of them. They are more content to feel schadenfreude at the idea of a have-not who is hurting when they themselves have health insurance than they are interested in solving important problems. As usual we must do all we can to wrest every bit of control over matters like this from the idiots who are too stupid to care so that we can do the right things for the people of this country.