Affording to Care

Growing up in rural Kansas during the Great Depression, my dad recalled how his father sat him down at the dinner table and explained that the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935 was the beginning of the end: The government had assigned everyone a number! I assume this was key to dad coming to believe that no one needs a handout or a leg-up. We couldn't have been more different, my dad and me. And when it came to health care or any other social assistance program, my father's views and mine seem emblematic of a divided America. On one hand distrustful of governmental intervention and on the other, longing for an equitable way to provide care and sustenance to those in need.

As a young man, dad went on to enlist in the army and survive World War II. Emergency surgery in an army field hospital in New Caledonia for a burst appendix nearly killed him, but he was tough. He chain-smoked and drank his way through life, never exercised, remained a staunch conservative, and lived from one pack of cigarettes to the next, for that next drink, and no further. He didn't plan ahead and later in life had no retirement savings nor any property of significance. Dad's day-to-day living expenses were met through an occasional check from my brother or me and his Social Security benefits, one of the very government programs that had been the focus of his conservative ire. For health care dad relied on government-provided health care; the doctors and staff at the local VA Hospital. This produced less cognitive dissonance for dad because as a veteran, he had earned those benefits.

All those years dad clung to the conservative belief of individual responsibility without ever realizing the irony of his situation. The bleeding heart liberals he derided had actually saved his bacon later in life. This was lost on dad because he never understood there is individual responsibility and then there's the Myth of Individual Responsibility. Admitting you've made a mistake, leaving a note on the parked car you just scratched, apologizing when you've wronged someone are all examples of individual responsibility. The Myth of Individual Responsibility is something altogether different, a simplistic way of looking at the world that says you're responsible to no one but yourself and maybe your loved ones: A friend in need is no friend of mine.

Even with the Supreme Court upholding most of the Affordable Care Act, distrust of government-run social programs lives on. Most Americans want to keep the core benefits of the ACA - protecting those with pre-existing conditions, allowing children to stay on their parent's policy until age 26, to name a few - but they seem afraid of health care rationing and unfounded rhetoric about death panels. Or perhaps they just don't like the man they see standing behind the landmark legislation - President Barak Obama.

How easy it is to influence the average American. Say something over and over again, and it becomes truth even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Visitors from other countries are puzzled by the popular rage against the ACA. As one tourist from the UK said to me, "Why would a country want its citizens, its very lifeblood, to not be healthy and educated? How else can a nation compete in a global economy?" Why indeed.

Dad passed away nearly two years ago, but the deep divide over many issues remains in America. And the debate over the ACA is far from over. Will we be able to look beyond the next election, take the long view, plan for the future, and realize that we're all stronger when we pull together? Or will we live day-to-day, minute-by-minute, worrying only about our own individual interests? Time will tell, but our nation's well-being may hang in the balance.