We are the richest, most advanced country in the world. Some might brag about that. But when we fail to adequately provide health care and educational opportunities for all of our citizens, despite our wealth and modernization, we show how we really stack up against the rest of the industrialized world, which does provide for its people. In that regard, we have nothing to brag about.
For too long, the wealthy and powerful have successfully scuttled attempts for our country to catch up on health and education. Rather than pay their fair share for the benefit of all Americans, the rich prefer to squander their wealth, lavishing it on meaningless status symbols while providing the highest levels of health and education for themselves. They could care less about ensuring that the less fortunate can have their ailments treated or an opportunity to pursue higher education.
The United States lags behind most of the developed world when it comes to providing health care access to all of its citizens. Sixty million Americans are uninsured, meaning that much of the care they need is out of financial reach. The great technology and skill that we have in the medical profession remains available only for those who can afford it.
Providing affordable health care for everyone is not a difficult goal to achieve. It simply requires a minor change in priorities. For example, at half the cost of Bush's ill-advised tax cuts for the rich, we could provide all Americans without insurance the same high-quality health plan that our Congressional representatives in Washington receive.
With education, our national policies are similarly negligent. Despite the loans, grants and scholarships available to college students, too many qualified students are still turned away by the classist financial barriers that greet them at the university gates. Those who do make it in struggle with escalating tuition costs imposed upon them. And those who graduate are often buried under mountains of debt.
Most of us recognize that education is a fundamental key to success in today's job market. By denying access to low-income students, we perpetuate a cycle of poverty that cannot easily be broken. Education is a right for everyone, not just a privilege for those who can afford it.
If so many other countries can promise their people health care and education, then surely the most powerful and wealthy nation on earth can do the same. It is about time we recognize health and education as rights that must be extended to all.
