The Age of Incompetence: Part XV

"If I were young enough I'd be doing what my Irish ancestors did during the Famine - looking for another country, one that didn't expect me to live like a stray dog...."
- Baffled Observer, Washington State

PLZEN At the beginning of summer I read a feature story in USA Today European edition about the economic crash and how it affected Americans who were just approaching retirement age or had only recently retired. In other words my peers. At the end of the USA story they focused on Jim and Macon McDavid of Raleigh, N.C. Their story is a sign of the times we live in.

Instead of enjoying their Golden Years Mr. McDavid, 72, is sending out resumes in hopes of finding work. They own a home in Raleigh and a vacation cottage in Sunset Beach. The Achilles' heel of their retirement dream came in a familiar but unexpected form: health care or the lack of it. Their son became mortally ill and they spent $70,000 of their savings on his medical care before he died. It was enough to tip over their financial boat and began their slide into a sea of disaster. They were forced to take out a second mortgage and at the same time their savings they'd invested in the stock market lost about half its value.

That forced them to put up for sale one of their two homes. The problem was there were no buyers. As McDavid put it, "Just because you put it on the market doesn't mean it will sell." The final words of the story captures the pain and reality of not just my generation of Americans but the country as a whole. McDavid said, "All our life we worked to be where we are, and we're not there anymore."

American are the only people in the industrial world where just one serious illness at the wrong time can destroy not just the life of the ill but a whole family and destroy what they have worked for an entire existence.

Dorothy depression

Dorothy Lange's faces of the Great Depression

That is what could be called the American way of death.

This has destroyed the dignity of an ever widening swath of people and their despair turns up in the letters to the editor. Where the black economy has intersected with a lack of health care for ordinary working Americans is where you find the darkest despair.

Since this economic crash started just over a year ago I find more and more a theme of wanting out of the American Dream that has turned into an American nightmare. One blogger wrote this to the New York Times:

Baffled Observer
Washington State
September 15th, 2009 7:35 a.m.
"Having sucked the lower class completely dry over the past several decades, the American Aristocracy has turned its insatiable hunger on the middle class now. The rich celebrate the return of million dollar bonuses while the rest of us swell the ranks of tent camps and food bank lines. If I were young I'd be doing what my Irish ancestors did during the Famine - looking for another country, one that didn't expect me to live like a stray dog. Ironic, isn't it? Back then, the land of opportunity was the United States...."

That was a common theme in many of the Americans commenting on the lack of health care and the vanishing of jobs that paid a living wage to support their families. I have found letters from Americans living in France, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, and Australia all exclaiming the joy of living in a society where they never have to worry about losing their life, home, or dignity because of lack of health care. All at a price a fraction of what they had to pay in America.

Most of all I find letters from Americans who once lived in America but found happiness in Canada for the same reason: a health care system that works for ordinary people. Their joy came from having their dignity back again. They could carry on their daily lives of working and living without a dark cloud hanging over them of knowing just one misstep on the wrong banana peel of an accident or sickness and they were ruined or dead.

Churchill25
Vancouver, Canada
Sept.8, 2009 6:20 a.m
I am an American living in Canada and I despair for my country of birth. Where to begin? On the health care question, please believe me when I tell you the Canadian system is SO much better. We can indeed select our own doctor. My sister just had a hip replacement (after a 3 week wait) that cost her not a penny and includes six weeks of post-op physio at no personal cost. When I lived in Phila, my mother used ALL of her savings paying for my brother's ultimately fatal medical condition. Pls do NOT believe what you hear about the health system in other countries. Remember that all of these govt. folks who say the "public option" is not necessary have a great "gold-plated" for their families."

You might recall that President Obama wasted no time in rushing through a bailout of the bankers and Wall Street, following the lead of the Bush Gang. And he said in the spring time that he wanted a Health Care bill for Americans on his desk before Congress went on their August vacation. But when Congress stiffed him he said, "No problem

fellas, enjoy your vacation. See you in September." Obama then packed up the family for a vacation in old Cape Cod.

In this time of crisis when so many Americans are suffering I think Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman would have said to our sleazebag Congress, "Ladies and gentlemen, in this time of national emergency there will be no vacation this year until I have a health care bill for every living American on my desk for signature. And if you don't get it right I'll veto it and send it back for you to do it right."

That's leadership. Obama flunked it - again. Yes to Cape Cod , no to Main Street .

Nickolas Kristoff in the New York Times recently wrote: "The American Journal of Public Health finds that nearly 45,000 uninsured people die annually as a consequence of not having insurance. That's one needless death every 12 minutes. When nearly 3,000 people were killed on 9/11, we began wars and were willing to devote more than $1 trillion in additional expenses. Yet about the same number of Americans die from our failed insurance system every three weeks."

In the time it takes to read this article two more Americans will have died needlessly. Obama, Congress, the insurance company lobbyists, all have the blood of innocent Americans on their hands. There is a literal blood bath out there in America's Main Street that is turning the American Dream into a nightmare.

Those who can are getting out as the Baffled Observer in Washington State would do if he was young enough and like Churchill25 did by relocating to Vancouver, Canada.

But for too many Americans like Mr. McDavid and his wife in Raleigh, N.C. there is no escape. They are those who "worked all their lives to be where they are, and they're not there anymore." (1,230)