Jill Richardson: America's service workers need healthcare

Via OtherWords.org

Our country  has a powerful myth that anyone can succeed as long as he or she works hard.

That’s the story of Alexander Hamilton that has swept Broadway: how a “bastard orphan” can become “a hero and a scholar.” According to the lyrics he did it by working harder, being smarter, and being a self-starter.

If that’s all you need to do to succeed, then it’s your own fault if you’re poor.

And White House spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway has no sympathy for you. If you’re sad the Republicans want   to take away your Medicaid, she says  you can go get a job. Because your poverty is your own fault.

 To quote Ernest Hemingway at the end of The Sun Also Rises, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

The reality isn’t as nice. We don’t live in a society where anyone can get ahead just by working hard. It might feel that way if you grew up middle class, but that’s not the reality that millions of Americans live in.

Sociological research confirms this unpleasant truth again and again.

As for the people on Medicaid who should just “get a job,” odds are that they already have a job. Maybe two jobs.

We as a society want people working in restaurants, cleaning our hotel rooms, checking us out and stocking shelves at stores, and doing any number of low-skilled, generally low-wage jobs. Some people even oppose giving those workers a raise because it would either cut into corporate profits or raise prices.

Well, we can’t have it both ways. We can’t benefit from low-wage labor while simultaneously blaming low-wage workers for their own poverty.

And if you’re truly callous enough not to care if the working poor have access to affordable health care, consider how their plight affects you.

Suppose for a moment that 22 million Americans lose their health care, which is what the Congressional Budget Office predicted would happen if the Senate passed the dead-for-now Republican healthcare bill. What happens?

Those 22 million people no longer go for preventive check ups. They don’t treat medical problems when they occur, before the problems get worse. They wait until they have no choice, and then they go to the emergency room.

If they cannot pay the bills accrued at the emergency room, the hospital eats the cost. But hospitals must balance their budgets somehow, so they raise prices for everyone else.

If you’re insured, then you’re not paying the hospital directly, so the higher prices go to your insurance company. And they pass it on to you in the form of higher premiums.

Thus, if you aren’t moved by the human suffering caused by depriving the working poor of health care, perhaps you’ll be moved by your own pocketbook.

Unless emergency rooms start declining treatment to anyone who can’t pay, turning cancer patients and gunshot victims onto the streets to die, somebody is going to pay for the care of the uninsured.

The question is whether they’ll be able to go for preventive check-ups and treat problems early, or whether they ‘ll go to the emergency room after they can no longer avoid it.

For those who rely on Obamacare for their insurance — myself included — the prospects of losing their healthcare is terrifying. I have several friends with cancer who are literally afraid they will die if a repeal bill passes. And that’s not hyperbole.

It’s time we stopped telling ourselves that anyone who’s struggling only has themselves to blame. And as the wealthiest nation on earth, it’s a travesty that we aren’t willing to help them.

 Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. 

Llewellyn King: Mr. Bannon, this is journalists' tough and essential mission

-- Photo by Kai Mork

At a news conference.

No, Steve Bannon,  counselor to President Trump, the news media are not the opposition. Nor are they a monolithic structure acting at the behest of some unseen hand, in conspiratorial unison. {Editor's note: Reminder: Fox News, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, Mr. Bannon's former employer Breitbart News and many, many other   large and small  news and opinion media outlets that the right-wing Mr. Bannon favors are part of "the media''. }

I am of the media and have been for 60 years  -- in fact from long before it was known collectively and misleadingly  as a blob called "the media''.

We are an irregular army, an array of misfits, disciplined by deadlines and little else. We eat irregularly, are sustained on coffee and, at times, something stronger. We love what we do and we do it in the face of shifting threats, from death on the front lines of war, to the excesses of media owners and the difficulty of making a living at it. We do the same job and do our best, whether it is for the smallest newspaper, newsletter or some great news outlet, such as The Washington Post or a TV network. John Steinbeck once said, “No one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.” So do we.

My friend Dan Raviv, of CBS News, once summed up what it is about — during another one of these periods when journalism was under attack — by explaining his own motivation, “I like to find out what’s going on and tell people.”

Why, then, are the media seen as monolithic, conspiratorial and of one mind? I will suggest it is because of an immutable law of the work that is beyond explanation, but is indestructible and essential: news judgment. It is to journalism what perfect pitch is to musicians. You have it or you do not; and while it can be cultivated, it cannot be inculcated.

In play, it makes us look collaborative: Journalists appear to belong to some secret order, such as the Freemasons. Whether we are from the smallest outlet to the mighty networks, if we are reporters, we will tend to pick the same things from a speech or an event. As an example, different newspapers will find the same news in the Sunday news shows and report it their Monday editions.

That is why when Kellyanne Conway uttered the words “alternative facts,” in an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, we pounced. We did so not because we are of one mind, but because the enormity of such a concept demanded our attention. No conspiracy, no political agenda, no common purpose beyond the news, just  Conway's extraordinary concept that facts are fungible, somehow legitimately subject to manipulation for political purpose. That is news. Big news.

Conway has complained that none of the other things she said in that interview were headlined. If she feels that way, clearly, she does not grasp the import of her own words; it was not the messengers, it was the message.

Why are so many journalists considered to be ''liberal''?

I am not sure  that so many  are liberal, but if I concede the point, consider this: We see the soft underbelly of society, whether we are covering refugees or police courts. People come to us seeking redress for real grievances and, mostly, all we can do is sympathize. If you have seen children dying of starvation or families sleeping on the street, you are unlikely to be worrying about the property rights of the rich. What you see conditions you.

I interviewed my first refugees in 1956. They were escaping the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian Revolution. That and later having seen thousands of refugees in Jordan, Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey, has indelibly informed me; those images are etched into my being.

When  President Trump suspended the trickle of Syrian refugees we are taking into the United States. It seemed again to be the powerful denying the humanity of the weak, most pitiable.

History is not to be denied and facts are just that. Journalism shows us the world out there, not the world in a leafy suburb. If knowing something of the pain of the world and wishing for justice is liberal, then indict and convict us.

Surprisingly, we are not very political. Congress is stuffed with lawyers, not journalists. We do not, in general, run for office.

Remember, Steve, if you know anything about the world, science or even politics, you learned a lot of it from journalists. We are the messengers, but we do not write the message.

Our essential job is to keep a wary eye on authority: Here’s looking at you, Steve

Llewellyn King, executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, is a long-time publisher, editor, columnist and international business consultant.