Wednesday, February 7, 2007

The Health of Society at its Base

Nancy Snyderman has filed a report on MSNBC.com that reminds us of Jim Webb's invocation of Andrew Jackson in his response to the State of the Union address. For those who do not remember, the key sentence was the following:

In the early days of our republic, President Andrew Jackson established an important principle of American-style democracy - that we should measure the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base.

Dr. Snyderman has provided us with an example in which we can take that noun "health" both literally and figuratively:

According to a recent study by Demos and the Access Project, 29 percent of low and middle-income households with credit card debt had medical bills to blame. These households carried an average $11,623 debt, compared with $7,964 for those without medical debt.

So, while Bush continues to help Osama with his goal of bankrupting the American economy with his Iraq budget, the health care industry (I can no longer dignify it with the noun "profession") is bankrupting our society "at its base" by running it into an unmanageable debt!

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