Ed Stein was the cartoonist at the (dearly departed) Rocky Mountain News. He has his own website now, EdSteinInk.com, and his cartoons are as brilliant as ever. He always writes something brief to go with them, but today he dedicated his time and space to this column. It's spot-on.
The Speech I Want Obama To GiveBy Ed Stein | August 12th, 2009
My fellow Americans, I’m speaking to you today from the Oval Office on a subject of great importance to all of us. The past few weeks have seen the debate over health care reform turn into an ugly, angry, divisive shouting match. Senators and Congressmen have been shouted down, insulted, even threatened at town hall meeting all across the country, meetings designed to help inform the people of this country about the complex issues confronting us. I am ashamed and embarrassed by the behavior of Americans who should know better. I call upon the American people to stop the shouting, to restrain your anger, and to engage instead in a respectful conversation. I ask my colleagues in the Republican Party, the television and radio commentators and others who have stoked the anger and encouraged the mob mentality that has taken over this debate to appeal for calm and for a restoration of a civil dialogue.
So much misinformation has been disseminated, so much fear has been spread, that it is difficult to even know where to begin. A final health care plan has not been submitted to me. The details of the plans working their way through Congress are still being negotiated. It is my hope that a bipartisan agreement can still be achieved for a comprehensive reform of America’s health care system. So let us not debate the details of a program which has yet to be made final.
The real debate is about what kind of country we want to live in. I ask all Americans, whatever your political leanings, whatever your profession, whatever your income, to ask yourself these fundamental questions. Do you want to live in a country where almost 50 million of your fellow Americans are without health insurance? Do you want to live in a country where 20,000 people a year die of preventable or curable illnesses because the don’t have access to adequate health care? Do you want to live in a country where 2 million people a year go bankrupt because of medical costs, where 1.5 million homes are foreclosed because people have run out of money paying for medical care, where if you lose your job you lose your health insurance, a country where you can be denied health insurance because you have a pre-existing medical condition? A country where a sudden illness can destroy your economic future, even if you have a job and health insurance?
If you find those conditions acceptable, then we need do nothing, because that’s the country you live in now. Alone in the industrialized world, America, the wealthiest nation on earth, is the only country which allows these things to happen. Our current system of health care is broken, fatally broken, and when I took the job as President, I made it my first priority to fix it. I do not, I cannot believe, that Americans want the status quo to continue.
Now ask yourselves another question. What do the shouting mobs who are drowning out the debate offer in place of what we are proposing? What do the angry opponents want, other than the status quo? Do they have a plan for solving the problems? They offer you nothing but opposition to fixing what is broken. Some for political reasons; they simply want to hand my administration a defeat. Some because they fear that any change will affect their corporate bottom line. Those who have accumulated fabulous wealth from a system that impoverishes millions want to keep the money flowing. Some oppose change because they are ideologically opposed to anything that government might propose. Some because they fear any change. No wonder they are shouting. They cannot offer you a genuine solution to our broken health care system, so they drown out the voices of hope and change instead.
My fellow Americans, we are better than this. We are a nation which has always found a way to solve our most vexing problems. Even when the issues were the most divisive, we have pulled together in the darkest of hours and forged solutions to the most difficult of issues. Today I call upon all Americans to lower our voices, to listen to each other, to speak calmly and respectfully, and to work together to build a health care system that will provide excellent, affordable medical care to every citizen of this great country.
Thank you, and may God bless America.