Health-care

A couple months ago, now, I shared some photos from President Obama's health-care reform kick-off here in Green Bay. He chose our fair city, apparently, because we have some of the best and most cost-effective health-care services in the nation.

I rarely editorialize on this blog. I'm slightly straying from that rule here, though. I look at this state-of-the-art machine in the photograph below... in a peaceful-looking (and feeling) room. It's a device and place designed to make an awful experience (radiation treatment for cancer) less taxing on patients.

Scott Moon, a medical physicist with Radiation Physics Consulting Services, does quality assurance on a Trilogy linear accelerator at Bellin Health's The Cancer Team in Ashwaubenon, Wis., Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2009. The device delivers precise radiation to patients for the treatment of cancer.

Who doesn't deserve access to this? In the United States, we have some of the most advanced medical tools and procedures in the world to heal us, cure us, and improve our lives. As people – with beating hearts and breathing lungs – access to some basic level of health-care is a right, yet we are privileged in America to be so fortunate in what we have access to. We're a proud enough nation to offer more than the basics to everybody. And yet, millions upon millions are shut out of not just our top-tier care, but of what they simply deserve as a person.

They are today's second-class citizen.