Sighing, I set my iPhone down last night at 12:30am, exhausted.  The House hadn’t voted yet, and it was looking like I would have to simply read about the outcome first thing in the morning.  As Mark and I lay in bed, we discussed what this vote, this monumental decision, would mean; and not just to me, either, but to the entire country.  I reminded him that my own father and two brothers had no healthcare cover of any kind, and I don’t think he knew Ben and  Chris were completely unprotected.

Thinking aloud, Mark made the comment that, should anything ever happen to one of my brothers, it would completely bankrupt the family in order to pay the medical expenses.  I began to cry.  It was a fact I guess I had always known: healthcare is costly, and the money wasn’t going to fall from the sky should one of them (God forbid) ever end up in the hospital for something serious.  Mom could lose her home (something that couldn’t happen to my dad seeing how the bank foreclosed on our childhood home two years ago. Capitalism rules! /sarcasm), and my family as a whole could end up with a debt they were unable to pay back.  It was another one of those moments where I truly felt the 6000 mile difference, and the helplessness that I would not be able to help or fix that kind of problem should it arise.

And I was angry.  So many people were so opposed to the idea of, *gasp*, healthcare for the masses, for the poor, for the young and for the unemployed.  So many people are so caught up in themselves they cannot comprehend how their ignorant opinions and worthless votes affect everyone else.  I wondered how so many people could be caught up in a delusion that this was somehow bad.

There is a word for this feeling in German (as my good friend Alicja was able to remind me): weltschmerz.  It means “world sadness” or, more specifically, the depression one can feel because there is a huge gap between the existing world and an ideal world.   This was exactly what I was feeling.  Sadness because my own family was to be vastly affected by the outcome, sadness because the US has the second highest infant mortality rate out of all industrialized nations due to adequate healthcare not being available for the poor, sadness because so many Americans had given into the fear mongering and were actually wanting the bill to fail, despite healthcare reform being in their own best interests.

But when I woke up this morning, grabbing my phone and pulling up the latest news, I was relieved.  Tears streamed down my face and all I could muster was, “holy fuck, it passed!”

It’s not universal healthcare, or free healthcare, but it is a step in the right direction.  Now people will be able to have access to insurance policies that are affordable based on their income.  They will be given insurance through their employers regardless of how many hours they work (Fuck Walmart). Prescription drug costs stand to be cut by 50% for the poor.  Now, young adults will be able to remain on their parents’ insurance policies up to the age of 26… which may mean my brothers could now be covered under my mother’s insurance.  It means taking the power away from the large insurance corporations, and no longer allowing them to force people to make the decision of whether to live or die based on which they can afford to do, no longer capitalizing on human life.

I find it ironic that, at one point during the debate, a republican rep stood up and shouted “baby killer!” while Bart Stupak was speaking.  Isn’t being against healthcare reform in an of itsself being a “baby killer?”  Annually, 2 million babies die within the first 24 hours of life due to a single crime: their mothers are poor and cannot afford healthcare.   So technically, aren’t all of those republicans and the few spineless democrats who voted against the bill “baby killers?”

And for all the money people dump into the current healthcare system, it is a proven fact other countries with universal healthcare spend LESS and cover all citizens:

A system that  costs US taxpayers 2.2 TRILLION dollars per year:

And still leaves 1/6 of all citizens with no cover at all:

I find myself very, very grateful to be under the UK system of healthcare during my pregnancy.  I am receiving excellent care and I am not going into debt just to have my baby.  The healthcare reform plan will take years to fully execute, but each and every day from here on out things will begin to change, and this bill is a blessing to so many millions of Americans in the US.  It gives us hope that things could still turn around and get better, and perhaps we can still save our middle class from disappearing under the crushing force of greedy capitalism.  Healthcare is the first step.

Yes we can!

Links worth reading:

For Consumers, Clarity on Health Care Changes

Democrats hail landmark US healthcare bill (source for graphs)

U.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world, report says

Why do people vote against their own interests?

The Great Thing About the Health Care Law That Has Passed? It Will Save Republican Lives, Too (An Open Letter to Republicans from Michael Moore)