An Apple a Day
May 7th, 2007 by Matt
My old man was a probation officer. My mom a phys. ed. teacher. Both were unionized, and in part because of this, they both had almost ridiculously excellent family health care. Growing up, I had regular check-ups, vaccinations, trips to the dentist and ophthalmologist, and both my sister and I had braces, all covered.
For my money, it’s hard to pursue happiness if you’re sick all the time (even more so if you’re, say, five years old), worried about doctor’s bills racking up, and your teeth are rotting despite your best flossing and fluoridated efforts. And kids should always be able to receive more than adequate health care. Why? I’ll toss four (count ‘em, four) reasons your way:
- First, kids that grow up in hard-working families or large families or poor families and lack quality health care, well, it’s no fault of their own. In many cases, probably most cases, it’s not the fault of the parents either.
- Second, we owe it to kids. As a culture, we’ve already decided that, in many ways, it’s our collective job to protect children. We’ve installed V-chips in TVs. We provide mandatory public education. There are different seatbelt laws for wee ones. Alcohol, tobacco, pornography, and gambling are off-limits. The government has set specific limits on the amount of work teens can do. Why the physical health of children and teenagers has been ignored flies in the face of the other ways we collectively lend a helping hand to young ones. It’s a lot easier to play and learn and simply be when you feel good: kids deserve as fantastic a childhood as we can reasonably provide them. All children are our children.
- Third, there’s a financial benefit. If you’re healthier, you’re going to find it easier to pay attention in school, and you’ll miss less days. For some families, it’s practically not an option to keep a kid home from school since the rent demands the parents go to work. Parents might have to choose between keeping a roof over their children’s heads and nuturing them back to health. Plus, a healthy populace is a more productive populace.
- Fourth, empathy is the American virtue. You see it in equal protection laws. You see it in homeless shelters, charities, Pell grants, aid to foreign countries, blood drives…. For crying out loud, you see it on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition! We saw it in spades on 9/11 and the days and months that followed. We even protect wildlife better than we protect some kids. To say that some children deserve to go to a doctor and others do not seems about as callous and cold-hearted as it gets. My friends, we’re better than that.
So, this is why I give a standing ovation to the efforts of Govenor Ted Kulongoski of Oregon (whose state motto, “She Flies With Her Own Wings,” mystifies me). Big Ted (that’s what I’ll call him today) “[pitched] to lawmakers on Monday to pass legislation that would provide health care for 117,000 uninsured children through an 84-cent increase in the state’s cigarette tax.” Okay, before you smokers get up in arms, can you honestly tell me you would refuse to pay more for nicotine and therefore refused to help out innocent children? I didn’t think so. (Just for a point of reference, 117,00o is nearly the size of Hartford, Connecticut.) It’s not like the parents of these children don’t bust their humps: “more than 90 percent of the uninsured children in the state live in a family with one or more working adults.”
But we need to do something nationally because, according to the Washington Post, “of the nation’s nearly 74 million children, about 8.3 million, or 11.2 percent, lacked coverage in 2005, up from 10.8 percent the year before.” 8.3 million? That’s more people than live in New York City. If you need a second to reread that last sentence, please, by all means, go for it, baby.
The thing is, I know we have it in our hearts to do better for our kids, our American kids, our future as a country where we believe children deserve our good our best gifts.
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