Over the weekend, Kevin Drum had a fantastic post about why we need universal health care. Just to add to everything he said, it’s utterly bizarre and twisted that a person in this country can receive government health insurance after losing all their life savings in a hurricane, but if a person who loses their job—through no fault of their own—and can’t pay for chemo injections, well, tough luck. It’s bizarre that Medicaid will cover those under the poverty line but not, quite frequently, those at twice the poverty threshold, or just over the cutoff, or often certain parents below the threshold. At present, people in very similar circumstances aren’t at all treated equally, and we’d do just as well tossing darts at a dartboard to determine who gets coverage and who doesn’t.
