Sounding Off:

Here is a rejoinder to reader Chuck Cassity’s piece on health-care reform (“Just say ‘No’ to misguided reform,” Dec. 15).

Some time far in the future, a newly aspiring Dickens will write a novel set in today’s Newport Beach, titled “A Tale of Two Perceptions.” It will go something like this:

It was the best of health care; it was the worst of health care.

Seen through the lens of everyday reality, 45,000 Americans were dying each year due to lack of medical insurance. The rolls of the uninsured stood at 45 million and were rising by several more millions each year. Those with insurance were being subjected to premiums increasing at two to three times the cost of living, while wages were stagnant and unemployment was at a historic high. Millions of Americans had to file for bankruptcy after falling ill, to cover medical costs that were 200% above those in other developed countries, and using prescription drugs that were 500% more expensive than in developing countries. The working classes — 90% of the population — were duped into believing that they lived in a representative democracy. Their government did not represent their interests or their wishes. They were all, no matter what party they belonged to, beholden to the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies. So they granted “anti-trust” exemption to the insurance companies, allowing them to charge whatever premiums the traffic could bear, without any competition. And they imposed a ban on the importation of any drugs, allowing the pharmaceutical companies to set prices five- to ten-fold what these same companies charged in other countries. It was very clear that the status-quo was not acceptable, as more and more American jobs were being exported because local small businesses could not shoulder the costs of providing health care to their employees. Reform in the form of wider availability of health care and the corralling of upwardly spiraling costs was a no-brainer. But there was an opposing view.

Seen through the rose-colored glasses of the beneficiaries of this grotesque robbery of the masses and through the eyes of their enablers, this was the best health care in the world that money could buy. Through smoke and mirrors, lies and fear mongering, they mounted furious attacks to maintain the status quo. First, they attacked illegal immigrants as part of the problem; then, they attacked legal abortions as another part of the problem; they invented the existence of death panels and health rationing; they scared the elderly with false rumors of the demise of Medicare; they even questioned the legitimacy of the president; they staged outrage at made-up allegations, inciting hate, disrupting meetings and threatening violence. They did not see any reason for change. Change would mean an end to their gravy train.

I do not know how this story will end. More than a century ago we fought a bloody civil war to change the status-quo on slavery. The forces arrayed against health care as a “human right” are the same forces that would not voluntarily give up slavery. Isn’t it ironic that the party that set the slaves free is the party that now wants to continue to enslave the American working class?

JAMSHED DASTUR lives in Newport Beach.