Majority Thinks The Poor Deserve To Die

This chart was made from information contained in a recent Gallup Poll -- conducted between November 7th and 10th of 1,039 nationwide adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

I found the results of this poll to be nothing less than shocking. A majority of Americans (56%) now believe that the government has no responsibility to make sure that all Americans have health insurance coverage (coverage that would allow them access to needed health care, including preventative health care). Who then does have that responsibility? Charities or churches? If so, then they have failed miserably for the last couple of hundred years to do that.

Maybe it's only the individual. That may sound good to those with lots of money, but we would have to change our economic system to make that work. It is just a fact that any capitalist system will have winners and losers -- those who become rich and those who are poor. We have been sold a lie over the last couple of centuries -- a lie that says everyone can become rich in a capitalist system. It is simply a fact that when one citizen in a capitalist economy hordes great wealth, he/she does so at the expense of others. There is only a finite amount of money in the system at any one time, and if one person has more than most it means that others must necessarily have less.

That means there are going to be some individuals who simply don't have the money to purchase their own health insurance (or health care). Do we just say tough luck, and let them die because they are poor? That seems to be what that 56% of Americans (and 86% of Republicans) believes -- that the poor don't have a right to receive medical care. They must believe that because the government is the only entity who can assure that all citizens have access to health insurance (and therefore health care).

All other developed countries recognize this. They have decided that health care is a right (even for the poor), and they have instituted systems that make sure all of their citizens receive decent health care -- and they do it at half the cost per capita as health care in the United States (where millions don't have health insurance, or access to preventative care). Even most conservatives in those other developed countries, while they may have some problems with their country's system, would never trade their system for the broken, inadequate, and expensive system in the United States.

By saying that health coverage is not a government responsibility, that 56% of Americans is saying that health care is not a right, but a privilege that should only be offered to those who can afford to pay for it. That's a rather strange belief for a country that is predominantly christian (and for Republicans, who overwhelmingly claim to be christian). It's like they never read the book (the Bible) they say governs their lives (especially the New Testament part of it).

The craziest part of this is that this has not always been the belief of most Americans (as illustrated in the chart below). In fact, it is a very recent majority that professes that belief. Prior to 2009, the predominant belief was that government does have that responsibility. It was only after the government tried to actually act on that belief (through the Affordable Care Act) that opinions began to change. And personally, I believe that is mostly because of the numerous, endless, and repeated lies told by Republicans to defeat anything proposed by the president (in spite of the fact that he was just accepting a plan for coverage that was devised by the right-wingers themselves).

Health care should be the right of all American citizens. While the Affordable Care Act is far from perfect (a single-payer plan like Medicare-for-all would have been better), it is a big improvement over doing nothing at all. Repealing it would just deny health care to millions of people -- and show this country as a dark and uncaring nation, unworthy of respect and admiration.