Fun fact: According to the Center for Disease Control, as of 2005, Texas had the highest percentage of uninsured residents of any state. That ranking hadn’t changed as of March 2013, when the Texas Legislative Study Group laid out a lot of pretty disturbing statistics about the state. It’s definitely worth a read.
Texas also ranks near the bottom of all states in the number of healthcare professionals who reside there and in the amount of assistance it provides to children, the elderly and the poor.
Ebola couldn’t have found a more accommodating host for its accidental introduction to the U.S.
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For anyone who has ever wondered out loud why we even need a federal government, the current Ebola scare provides a mighty compelling answer.
When all we have to worry about is our financial security, the Feds are “them,” who pick our pockets to finance programs that only benefit other people. Industries should “self-regulate,” and federal mandates only serve to inhibit growth and prosperity.
The Federal government ought to keep its nose out of everyone’s business.
Then a bridge collapses or a tornado scours Oklahoma and the whole complexion of our relationship with federal government changes.
When things go wrong…when things go very, very wrong…Americans automatically expect protection from on high.
Then, when the dust clears, they assume total amnesia and march obediently to the polls to reelect the blockheads who brought us sequestration and promise that trickle-down economics will somehow miraculously elevate the underprivileged after decades of non-delivery.
It is perhaps the cruel hand of poetic justice that brought the first Ebola patient to be diagnosed in the U.S. to Texas, the most deliberately under-regulated state in the union.
Due to inadequate protocols, not only was he sent home with a 103-degree fever; even after he was finally diagnosed several days later, his family was confined in close quarters with his contaminated linens for four more days!
Now we learn that, again due to protocol failures, one of the patient’s care-givers has been infected.
And how is that “market economy” doing with the job of providing drug treatment for Ebola victims?
Suddenly, the idea of a well-funded and federally coordinated response to the threat of this terrifying disease doesn’t sound like such a bad idea after all.
Suddenly, we want “our” government very much involved in our healthcare.
Here’s a timely and typically astute discussion of how we got to 2014 without a vaccine for a deadly virus the U.S. has been aware of for over a decade.
So when local, state, and national candidates talk about cutting budgets, think about what it is that gets cut. Among the earliest slashes: research on vaccines and treatment for diseases that someone you know may contract and die of.
NanuqFC
[…] the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey
The John Birch strain of Libertariansim demands the Feds BUTT OUT of the Ebola Epidemic and let the Free Market handle it with it’s superior efficiency. Here is a policy statement from the ‘Koch Brothers Are Gods Foundation’:
Since the people contracting Ebola are poor, the Free Market has determined that there will be NO vaccine. And since all forms of Government interfere with profits, there will be NO quarantines, NO checking people for fevers at airports, NO lifting of any fingers to stop this disease from spreading. Because the Free Market needs the excess poor to die off anyway, and this is perfect!
Thank you for your unshakable belief in the Invisible Hand of the Free Market to solve EVERY problem without that need for that awful ‘government’. And as always, VOTE REPUBLICAN!!!