Michael Steele recently said during a Univision interview that: “I don’t think we need a comprehensive overhaul of our healthcare system.”

When Bill Caudle lost his job at a plastics company this year, he also lost his health coverage. That means that he lost the ability to pay for his wife’s healthcare, as she has ovarian cancer. He was so committed to making sure his wife can get the treatment that she needs, so committed that she not become one of the 45,000 Americans who die from inadequate health coverage every year…that he joined the Army.

Thomas Jefferson noted that a volunteer-based large standing army required a permanent class of paupers. At the end of his presidency he bragged about largely eliminating America’s standing army, saying that: “Our men are so happy at home that they will not hire themselves to be shot at for a shilling a day. Hence we can have no standing armies for defence, because we have no paupers to furnish the materials.”

Bill Caudle’s story is emotionally moving but is also very important. It’s stories like these that should make us all take a step back from the politics and statistics and look at the human element of all of this. It is morally inexcusable that in the richest country in the world someone would have to join the Army to get healthcare for his wife. That’s what the national healthcare debate should be about.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 11:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.