PrintAugust 7, 2009
Why Jewish Grandmothers Should Oppose Obama Care
My grandmother was forever warning me to be careful. Since it usually does not take much for a teenage boy to grow wearisome of hearing such unsolicited advice, especially from a grandparent, I eventually complained to her, "Why do you keep telling me to be careful?" Without hesitation, she looked straight into my eyes and lovingly responded, "A bi gezunt!"
A bi gezunt, in Yiddish, is so long as you're healthy, but the literal translation does not do the expression justice. A bi gezunt really means whatever your problems may be, do not fret, for as long as you have your health, you can come out on top of any situation. In other words, my grandmother kept telling me to be careful because she did not want me to have an accident that might jeopardize the most precious gift a person can have in life, good health.
If my dear grandmother were alive today, she would be the first to admit our present-day health care system needed some work. She would no doubt want something done to help those who could not afford but wanted coverage, she would want something done for those with catastrophic illnesses who cannot get coverage, and she would be concerned for the elderly who faced losing all their assets because they suffered from Alzheimer's. She probably would even be open to the idea of paying more taxes if she believed it would make a difference.
If Barack Obama's primary concern were to help those uninsured who desired coverage but were without, he could propose specific legislation in behalf of them. If he wanted to improve upon the health care system, he could address Medicare and Medicaid fraud, doctor malpractice insurance rates, and multimillion-dollar settlements that line the pockets of lawyers. Instead, he has chosen a mammoth health care (work in progress) "reform" bill of 1,000 pages in length.
Many people oppose Obama Care explaining that the devil is in the details of the bill, and they are correct, for a 1,000-page bill provides wonderful camouflage when one wants to give coverage to those illegally here and set landmines that force real citizens no choice but to follow the road that eventually ends with "public option." More specifically, though, the devil is in the phrase reform bill because reform bill intimates change for the better, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Obama Care is not reform, it is nationalized health care, plain and simple. It will lead to the government calling the health care shots, which means the eventual death of the medical private sector, which means more general practitioners, less specialists, and the rationing of medical services. All this adds up to only one thing: inferior health care for the average American and more power to President Obama and the Democrats.
As I stated before, my Jewish grandmother would probably have been willing to have her taxes raised if she thought it was for a good cause. She would have been, however, suspicious of a health care program that was good enough for the public but not good enough for our legislators, and she certainly would have been against Obama Care because it represents inferior health care for the family she left behind upon her death.
To be sure, my grandmother would have opposed Obama Care because she would have wanted what was best for her loved ones and she understood that the most important thing in life was a bi gezunt.
