Universal healthcare. Oh how those words strike fear in the hearts of rich, greedy men. I’ve heard a few arguments against universal healthcare. Always, of course, from people with healthcare insurance. Most of us without healthcare coverage know how important it is to move forward and join the rest of modern civilization. People who are currently wealthy enough to afford private healthcare argue that they don’t want the government choosing their doctors for them and they don’t want to be put on a waiting list for routine procedures.

Those same people have no qualms with the rest of us not even being afforded the luxury of that waiting list. When you don’t have healthcare coverage you are on a different kind of waiting list. It’s called the “wait until you’re having a near-death experience” list. However, there is a simple solution for this. If you want private healthcare, above and beyond government healthcare, then go buy it.

Remember when you went to the amusement park years ago and everybody had to stand in a really long line for hours on end? And now, all the people with more cash than time can pay extra to jump to the front of the line. Why can’t that work with healthcare? That guy over there can go to his really great doctor, in the fancy office, with the plush waiting room chairs, and all the best magazines, on the good side of town, and I’ll be sitting over here just happy to finally be in any waiting room.

I’ve heard people argue that the heaviest burden will be on the rich and it’s like penalizing the wealthy for being so darn wealthy. This is absurd. If the wealthiest person on earth lived on a deserted island and thought up this great idea, he’d (face it, it’s a man…but that should be saved for another rant…) be as broke as any of us. That guy is rich because I liked his idea and am willing to pay him for it.

Without me, he is nothing. The least the guy can do is buy me a pap smear once a year. Why wouldn’t he want to keep me alive and feeling good? After all, I can’t buy his latest if I’m dead and/or paying off exorbitant medical bills. And I know there are some of the people still who are naïve enough to believe that everybody in the world was born into the same family, with the same upbringing, in the same type of neighborhood, with the same amount of money, and the same opportunities for education, and the same two parents who were annoying but loved them nonetheless.

And because of these beliefs, they tend to be really self righteous and imagine that there are some people out there (people without jobs, people without homes, people who aren’t running on the giant hamster wheel and making the world go “round) who don”t deserve adequate health care because they can’t afford it and they’re not carrying their own weight. These people often have no clue what it’s like to be mentally stunted and emotionally crippled by early childhood and/or adolescence.

A boy born of a crackhead, single mother in the projects simply does not have the same life chances and opportunities as a boy born of a mother who has never done drugs and has a supportive husband and family and will be able to be a stay at home mom. That’s reality. So, why don’t we all imagine how few people would be left behind to fend for themselves with unsatisfactory life skills and tools, if we could offer them help with their issues. Of course, as a compromise, we could surely insist that for continued care one must take random drug tests…including, but not limited to…tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, meth etc. And for those of you whom not even that would satisfy…my suggestion is this…go live in Iraq. That’s what I was told to do when I said I didn’t want to financially support your war.

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness….No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” ~John Donne