Some food for thought

I don't get political here. I don't really think it's the place and there's always an argument when you start to talk politics. But, I want to share this because it literally stopped me in my tracks. Yes, I was on the treadmill at the gym on Wednesday night and was sort of reading the closed captioning on one of the TVs. This is what it said:

"Let me finish tonight on a topic that‘s dominated this capital city for months now. It won‘t surprise anyone who watches this program regularly that I agree with the president on health care. He says we need reform and I believe he‘s right. We can argue endlessly about how to do it, how far to go, and may never reach agreement. The important thing is to get off the dime. Look, if you or I get into a car accident, and we‘re lying out there on the pavement, we still have hope. We hope and even trust that an ambulance is coming, and we‘ll get wheeled into a emergency room where the doctors and nurses will do their best to save us. The same is true if we have a heart attack or a stroke. We have this hope because, with all our cowboy individualism in this country, we know, when it comes down to it, bad things happen, and no matter how tough we are, we need a doctor, and need one bad, and we get one.

But today we use our emergency rooms as clinics for people who can‘t afford doctors, who sit for hours in our ERs because our hospitals can‘t turn away a person in need. Look, I‘m for national health reform because I believe we need to grow up as a country. We need to get adults enrolled in an insurance program. We need to begin sharing the cost of health care among the healthy and the not so healthy, the young and the not so young.

We need to start acting like Americans, responsible citizens who are willing to insist on our taking responsibility for our health care to the full extent of our ability. We can make changes as we go along. We can add a public option at some point. The important thing is to grow up and put away the childish notion that if we‘re really lucky, we‘re never going to need a doctor, and if anything happen, we can take care of ourself. Well, the president says we need health care reform and the president is right."

This was Chris Matthews's closing statement on Hardball on Wednesday night and frankly I agree with it. I'm so tired of everyone making this a party issue. No matter what party you are you're a person and you deserve to have health care. Most of us are fortunate enough to have it, but are still one illness or accident away from being broke. This from the most powerful nation on earth. It's just not right.