In the untimely death of Rina Fitria along with the closure of an exciting political season it is important that we look at what may be the greatest injustice in America, the corporate controlled Health Care system in America which regularly puts profit before people and in turn denies some the right to life as was the case with Rina Fitria.
For those unaware, Rina was an OSU student diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2007 who died Nov. 4. Rina lost her battle with cancer amidst an attempt to raise $100,000 for a potentially life-saving bone marrow transplant.
Let me make it clear that I do not intend on using the tragic death of a young woman in order to gain a cheap political point; rather, I find it best to cite an example that we as a community can relate to in this time of grieving.
While I do not know the exact circumstances surrounding Rina’s battle with cancer including whether or not she had any health insurance and whether or not a bone marrow transplant would be covered under it if she did. What I do know is that caring individuals, some friends, some acquaintances, and some strangers, worked together to raise $82,000 in an attempt to give Rina a second chance at life; the life so many of us take for granted every day.
The selfless act of those who came together to raise money for Rina gives me hope for our society; however, the game of monopoly played with the life of a 21 year old with so much potential makes me sick. Corporate greed and a blind eye denied Rina her right to live and will do so to another 22,000 adults in America this year.
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” Martin Luther King Jr. spoke these words more than 40 years ago. While many of the issues Dr. King preached, fought, and ultimately died for have since progressed tremendously culminating with the election of the first black president of the United States just days ago, health care remains in shambles and something must be done.
Right now you are probably thinking “Oh great, another bleeding liberal” and you are likely considering moving to the Sudoku puzzle. Before you do, take a minute and reflect on our current health care system. America has the best technology and the best doctors in the world.
There are few illnesses/complications that can not be treated with the poke of a needle, the swallow of a pill or the scalpel of a surgeon. If you fall ill, you simply go to the doctor and they fix it. Where once people would have wondered “will I live or will I die?” you wonder, “will I make it to my 10:30 class with this kind of wait?”
The American health care system is undoubtedly the best in the world; that is if you can afford it. Health care has advanced to levels our great-grandparents could have only dreamed about and yet in the wealthiest country in the world we treat health care as a luxury good that only the privileged may consume.
Now that we are aware of the problem we likely knew existed and simply chose to ignore, we must look for an alternative. The alternative, in my opinion, must offer health care to every person living and/or working in America. I am sure you have heard the myths about universal health care in Canada where people wait in line for six weeks in the freezing rain while they are holding their left arm in their right hand waiting to see a doctor after a machine accident.
Fact being, it is just that: a myth. While waiting lists are created for elective surgeries the existence of a crisis (if any exists) has been greatly exaggerated by the American media. Universal health care as proposed by Barack Obama and many other legislators is absolutely necessary in a nation as great as ours. The denial of a potentially lifesaving procedure due to a lack of money to pay for it is not only wrong, it is criminal.
This is not a conservative issue and it is not a liberal issue; this is an American issue. We can not continue to allow companies to deny medical services/treatments to patients whether covered by insurance or not on the basis of their race, gender, or socioeconomic class; something must be done and it must be done now.
Our hearts and prayers are with the family and friends of Rina Fitria in this difficult time. I would like to leave you with a quote from Senator Ted Kennedy: “Health care is not just another commodity. It is not a gift to be rationed based on the ability to pay. It is time to make universal health insurance a national priority, so that the basic right to health care can finally become a reality for every American.”
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While I agree that the healthcare system has innumerable problems and needs to be revamped. Giving the control of healthcare to our government is probably the stupidest thing we can do.
We’re giving the power of saving our lives to a bunch of people that have no idea of what they’re doing. Our lawmakers are not experts in healthcare, and they have no business trying to control something they understand nothing about. It will only make the situation worse.
I don’t think it’s a cheap political point to illustrate the heinous injustice of an immensely and monstrously rich country which, for whatever reason perhaps pretentiously described by Ayn Rand, cannot allocate a tiny and insignificant fraction of its wealth for people like Rina. It is savage and primitive and unfair when her medical bills require a campaign of fund-raising. I did not know Rina personally, but I participated in fund-raising events for her and donated what money I could. Meanwhile, Congress spends billions to kill people in Iraq and save some rich guy’s company.
Most of the waiting lists and times are not actually a myth. In some cases, they are exaggerated by journalists. But then again, I would venture to say most journalism has a touch of exaggeration written in… I have actually seen cancer treatment wait times reported through BBC, and they aren’t too pretty. And when you say “elective surgeries,” what do you mean? Elective surgery can help ward off an urgent or emergency surgery.
Who do you blame for corporate greed? Without greed, where would any business be? Business is not created simply for the greater good. If it was, where would the incentive be? Also, “profits” is not actually a dirty word. Who owns most publicly traded corporations? Profits are generally either given out to stockholders through dividends, or put back into the company for research and development. It’s not as if some fat cat at the top is skimming off some poor man or woman’s health care funding in order to support a lavish lifestyle. Besides, it’s hard enough to make a profit. Corporations pay nearly 40% of revenues into taxes.
There are far reaching consequences when you socialize any industry. This problem needs to be approached with logic instead of emotion.
It is always unfortunate when someone passes on, and my regards go out to Rita’s family and friends.
While I do enjoy Ayn Rand’s novels, I do know they are fiction. She did not help me come to my current view on this subject.
If people did not want more for less, specialization would never have come about. We would have remained a hunter-gatherer race. Humans are specialized beings because we realize that we can gain greater benefits by focusing on one task. We then trade for the other things we need. Businesses are just groups of people that focus on one task. If we had never been “greedy,” we never would have desired to get more for less, and there would have been no benefit to specialization. This has little to do with Ayn Rand, and much to do with simple economics.
Businesses aren’t started to boost the greater good. If you started a company, wouldn’t you want to make money? People don’t simply work for the greater good either. If I was to enter the workforce and work for a firm, let’s call it Bob’s Widget factory, I would expect to be compensated for everything I do. If they did not compensate me, and instead compensated three others, I wouldn’t want to work there. Who would? Incentives matter. Without incentive, there would be no reason to work.
By this logic, the doctors are at equal fault for her death. Because of their greed, they did not treat her without compensation.
Aaron’s second statement is also very true.
It is heinous to play on pure emotion to garner support for a political stance. We’ve played on emotion too much in the past, and there is much evidence to prove it. We need to work on logic.
Again, my condolences go out to Rina’s friends and family. It is truly a hard thing when such a young life leaves us.
As a college student, I can see how easy it is to take the views you do. In any given week, you can find someone giving out free Hideaway pizza, or maybe some hot dogs. Going to school is a never failing reason for not getting a job, and enjoying our parents or loans money. For posterity sake, let me mention that there are no free lunches in the real world. This is probably breaking news to you, but it’s not surprising based on the content of this article. So I must ask you, where do you plan on getting the money, for which over 63,000 cases occurred in 2007. Now we have over six billion dollars needed, and by your logic, it doesn’t matter because we will take the money from that guy with all that dirty money while you go on worrying about next weeks test. There are only 300 million people in the United States, thats obviously enough to take care of over 6 trillion people, easily. Actually, scratch that, in honor of your obvious preferred presidential candidate, let’s make all doctors slaves. That will save everybody, and we will all live forever and never die. Heaven forbid, Todo gets hit by a car, so we need to enslave all the veterinarians while we are at it. But I will admit, I do enjoy the satisfaction I have from working for a greedy corporation that supplies the greedy health insurance I have which treats me as a name, and not a number in a mathematical formula.
No free lunches in the real world? Ok, I’ll remember that next time I read about the $700 Billion handout to corporations during this credit crisis.