The sheer obscenity of VISA's "Healthcare Gift Card".

[babylonsister]

The sheer obscenity of VISA's "Healthcare Gift Card".
by xxdr_zombiexx | Nov 2 2007


Healthcare as a gift, not a right

11/2/2007

A "diary" at Daily Kos today informed me that VISA, the credit card giant, is issuing "healthcare gift cards".

I find this profoundly disturbing and outrageous.

Preface
I am deeply affected by this because my entire professional career, such as it has been, has been in hospitals and out-patient clinics providing mental health care to mainly poor and lower-income families. 25 years of it.

Currently I am laid off, I am convinced, directly and indirectly due to the policies and mindsets that have created what I call - and you likely call - the Crisis of Healthcare in America.

I am about ready to submit an application to become a licensed professional counselor which should make me a lot more valuable in the current managed care dominated theater. It's all about money and that is profoundly wrong, but people accept this as if it is the Way of the Natural World.

The title, at first glance, to people other than myself, seemed like satire, but the read of the article left no doubt that the company has seriously, as in actually, done this. And it is profoundly wrong.

We are all born on the same planet in the same way.

We all must eat, we all must have water. We all need protection from the sun and the rain.

But not everybody gets it.

We all get sick and we all get injured. Just getting born requires healthcare and that is supposedly something "extra", as if it is just an option and not inherently necessary.

In America, one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in human history, tens of millions of children and even more adults have no way to afford even the most basic routine healthcare, yours truly and his wife included.

This is because many people in America have come to accept and believe that healthcare is just not an inherent right, like air or water. People accept it without question and some take vehement exception to this notion being challenged.

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/10797