What's the emergency?

The things that right-wing Republicans and mainstream news outlets use to stir up and manipulate popular fear are not always the things that really endanger us.

For instance, Truthout has cross-posted Hold Onto Your Underwear: This Is Not a National Emergency from TomDispatch.com. In this essay, Tom Englehardt compares the 290 fatalities that would have occurred on Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day -- if "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been successful -- with the things that actually kill US citizens:

In 2008, 14,180 Americans were murdered, according to the FBI. In that year, there were 34,017 fatal vehicle crashes in the U.S. and, so the U.S. Fire Administration tells us, 3,320 deaths by fire. More than 11,000 Americans died of the swine flu between April and mid-December 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; on average, a staggering 443,600 Americans die yearly of illnesses related to tobacco use, reports the American Cancer Society; 5,000 Americans die annually from food-borne diseases; an estimated 1,760 children died from abuse or neglect in 2007; and the next year, 560 Americans died of weather-related conditions, according to the National Weather Service, including 126 from tornadoes, 67 from rip tides, 58 from flash floods, 27 from lightning, 27 from avalanches, and 1 from a dust devil.

In this list, Englehardt doesn't address our national health insurance situation, but I think he should have. Lack of access to lack of health care seems to be a real emergency in the US. According to the authors of this report,

44,789 Americans each year—123 people every day—die because they lack health insurance. Others are driven to financial ruin. Medical debt was a key reason that 62 percent of personal bankruptcy filers sought court protection in 2007.

Meanwhile, according to the same report, health insurance companies made record profits while 2.7 million more people lost health insurance coverage. (Thanks to Reclaiming Medusa on Facebook for the link.)

Right-wing Republicans insist that the United States has the best health care in the world and tries to frighten citizens about the possibility of socialized medicine. President Obama and other centrist Democrats seem to have crafted a "solution" to the health care crisis that forces uninsured people to buy insurance from private companies, with some subsidies that may or may not cover the cost of this insurance. Meanwhile, public discourse takes place in a climate of irrational panic.

I wish I had a clear idea of a good course of action to deal with this mess.