Ebert's - "I'm safe on board. Pull up the life rope"

Thanks to the wonderful Chicagoan Driftglass, I came across this column by Roger Ebert.

Wow. Simply wow.

Now, how come we cannot have the discussion about health care reform in focus on the basic, moral soundness of caring for all? I suppose its because if that discussion were to break out into the mainstream, many, many citizens would discover the ugly truth about politics in our age. That is, the ultra-small, ultra-wealthy elites have long used and continue to use the "rubes" in ways that pit them against each other and their own interests.

More interesting, why is the Administration not using the basic, compelling moral argument to defend progress in national health care?????

His column is so full of straight up good plain talk that I can hardly believe it was published at all, let alone in a major city daily. For example:

Federal Death panels would decide who lives or dies. This, very frankly, is a lie. The nearest thing we have to a death panel in the United States is an insurance company claims adjuster. Some readers wrote that they or their loved ones were denied tests or treatment by their insurance companies, especially in the case of "pre-existing conditions." One, who had a brain tumor, says he was denied coverage of the treatment by an adjuster, as if he'd known about the tumor at the time he took out his policy some time earlier. Think about this. Unless we die violently or in an accident, we all die of a pre-existing condition. The condition is called "life."

and

A nation is a mutual undertaking. In a democracy, we set out together to do what we believe is good for the commonwealth. That means voluntarily subjecting ourselves to the rule of law, taxation, military service, the guaranteeing of rights to minorities, and so on. That is a cheap price to pay....Yes, even the senior citizen at that Arizona town hall meeting who screamed at his congressman: "Keep the government's hands off my Medicare!" He didn't know Medicare is a federal program, and he didn't want to know.

Ebert really says it best:

I believe universal health care is, quite simply, right.

And that, quite simply, is where this serving patriot stands.