When You Think About Civil Rights, Think About Health Care
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhuman,” said Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966.
This weekend we commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. His message of health care rings loudly in our ears.
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhuman,” King, said at the Second National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Chicago on March 25, 1966
51 years later, we Americans await the inauguration of a president the majority of us did not vote for. Millions of Americans face an unclear future about their health care coverage. Being without health care is inhuman. It is a right, not a privilege.
The Republican administration’s promise of an immediate health care crisis is unfolding and causing chaos in the hearts and minds of Hawaii’s residents. Inasmuch as more than 300,000 residents of Hawaii receive Medicaid benefits, this will only add to the increasing costs of living in paradise.
On Thursday, the U.S. Senate began making moves to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, approving a budget blueprint that would allow senators to gut the law without fear of a Democratic filibuster. The U.S. House did the same Friday.
Congressional Democrats made their objections known. Among them was Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, who said that the Republicans were “stealing health care from Americans.”
While some people have their heads down playing video games, tweeting trash and shopping on line, a revolution is taking place that will change the course of history. All too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that this new situation demands.
“This is no time to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism,” King said long ago, but the statement applies now.
We must act aggressively. The Republican approval of the budget blueprint came before the new administration is sworn in. For years the Republican majority has vowed to dismantle President Barack Obama’s signature legislation. They do not seem to have any thought of what this will do to millions of people, independents, Democrats and Republicans, some in their own districts.
Yes, we do live in a period where changes are taking place. Whenever change comes into history it brings with it new challenges and new opportunities; and it’s clear we have to deal with the challenges.
We do not know what that looks like, but there is a revolution taking place in the world today. It is here! We must be ready. The challenges we face today makes us one.
Unlike , we cannot sleep through the revolution.
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