Marquis Stuff, or Why Health Care Is Not Yet Universal

With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration…the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of its way.  At last..one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged. But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped…

‘What has gone wrong?’ said Monsieur, calmly looking out.

A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal

‘Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!' said a ragged and submissive man, ‘it is a child.’

‘Why does that man make that abominable noise?  It is his child?’

‘Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis—it is a pity—yes’…

‘Killed!’ shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. ‘Dead!’

The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis.  There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger.  Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they remained so.  The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was fat and tame in its extreme submission.  Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.

He took out his purse.

‘It is extraordinary to me,’ said he, ‘that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children.  One or the other of you is for ever in the way.  How do I know what injury you have done my horses?  See!  Give him that.’

He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell.  The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, ‘Dead!’

What a fitting metaphor for the Republican attitude toward health care! This excerpt from Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities was written over a century and a half ago.

Things haven’t changed that much, have they?  (Well they have, and haven’t—The French say it best, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!)

The Marquis’s coach is rushing through the streets where the “common people” live, on his way to some villa or other, no doubt.  That’s about the only contact he has with them, not counting servants, of course.  They might as well be Martians.  French royalty at the time, like Republican in ours, did not share the belief that all members of society are a part of a whole. (“We’re all in this together,” is not a Republican maxim). The Republicans do not represent the interests of the poor and the working class, members of which might as well be Iraqis.

What were the concerns of the marquises of  the ancien régime?  Again, the French say it best.  Here is an excerpt of a wonderful song made famous by Maurice Chevalier:

Quand un marquis

Rencontre un autre marquis,

Qu’est-ce qu’ils se disent ?

Des histoires des marquises !

Free translation : When a marquis/ meets another marquis,/ what do they talk about ?/ Marquis stuff.

In the Republican case, “marquis stuff” is return on investments, buying a second vacation home, yacht maintenance, etc.  Health care for all? Certainly not.

Unlike the French aristocracy before the Revolution, Republicans have to get elected.  They go to great lengths to trick voters--some voters, enough voters--into believing that they represent their interests.  They are in favor of issues that arouse a lot of emotion, such as opposition to abortion and the requirement that trans men and trans women use bathrooms designated for the gender on their birth certificates.  This, of course, is a smokescreen to hide what they’re really after: more money for themselves.

Can pundits really discuss with a straight face the recent health care proposals of the Republicans?  Don’t they realize the obvious: the oligarchs want to rescind the taxes on the rich that help pay for Obamacare.  They want to save money; they are not interested in saving the lives of those with little or no equity.  Follow the $$$! It leads to Washington.

All politicians dance around facts that would threaten their career if they spoke the plain truth. Democrats do this as well, but an objective person must concede that Republicans are the current masters of, well, lying, so that they can divide and rule.  If you ask Paul Ryan, for instance, if he believed that health care is a right, he would obfuscate something like this, “Every American has the right to access to health care.  The first thing we must do is repeal the disaster called Obamacare. We want to be sure that the American people get the health care they need,” etc, etc.  We just don’t want to pay for it.

Let us return to Dickens.  After the Marquis throws a coin to the crowd, as payment for running over and killing a child, he orders the driver to proceed.  Suddenly, the coin is hurled back at him.  Enraged, he says,

'You dogs!' said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front, except as the spots on his nose: 'I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth.  If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.'

Anger sometimes makes one forget restraint; sometimes rage makes one say what one really thinks. I will provide two Republican examples.

This happens rarely with Republicans, but it did happen recently.  Senators and congressmen in red states have been skewered at town hall meetings lately.  A good deal of their constituents have figured out that Obamacare saves lives and that many will die if Republican proposals, the goal of which is to lower taxes, are implemented.  Many have testified that they or one of their loved ones are alive today because of Obamacare. 

In one recent heated town hall meeting, Raúl Labrador, a congressman from  Idaho, was being grilled by his constituents.  After being shouted down and booed for some time, his defenses were down.  When a woman asked him, point-blank, whether he thought health care was a basic human right, he was so besieged that he actually let the Republican truth slip out: “No, I do not believe that health care is a basic human right.” The audience was furious.

(The second example occurred while members of a town hall meeting chanted: You work for us ! You work for us!  Angered, the Republican replied that he was not working for them; he stated that he was independently wealthy and therefore could do what he pleased.  Wow!  Ain’t freedom grand.)

Never mind that the United States is the only major industrialized country where health care is not provided to all citizens.  Isn't ours the richest country in the world?  The only reason why health care for all has not been realized in the United States is simple: plutocratic greed.

Ryan’s panacea for helping the poor and sick is the establishment of state-run high-risk pools funded by the government.  This has been tried with disastrous results.  The funding would have to be many times the sum Mr. Ryan has proposed.  It’s simply another version of, “Let them eat cake.”

The fact that millions of people still can’t afford health care is a national disgrace.  The Republican solution?  Increase that number by many millions more.

Once the French Revolution began, the attitude of the people toward aristocrats was, “Off with their heads!” We Americans are a compassionate people.  Let those selfish politicians keep their heads. Let us, instead, use ours and vote those latter-day marquises out of office.