Poor Old Richard, doctorfixit, is that we currently have 50 million Americans - not illegal aliens - American citizens who do not have any healthcare insurance at all. One in six Americans. Media is great with stats, but not so superb at shining a light on what that means.

50,000 million. That's the entire west coast population - California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, and throw in Nevada too. Or the populations of New York State, Florida and Illinios combined.

Just for an exercise, let's move you and all the uninsured to those locales - the "Uncovered States of America".

You and everyone around you in, say, San Francisco would be suffering from all sorts of random ailments for lack of coverage, and lack of being a millionaire to cover your own health costs. (If you are millionaires, pardon me.) You'd know many, many people who had died in the last decade for lack of proper care. (I know two myself, a best friend and a sister, as it happens.)

You'd go to the doctor and be treated very differently from other, insured patients (bused in daily, let's suppose, from the Covered States of America - CSA) - you'd get sleazy looks from the front desk ("Poor Richard, how can he possibly pay his bill?") and less than full options from your doctor ("we could do that, but as you're uninsured, let's wait"). You'd sit on your symptoms for all sorts of conditions instead of cleaning out your bank account for a visit, and god forbid, a referral to specialists.

Or - you just wouldn't go at all.

You'd be up shit's creek, and your entire family and all your loved ones with you. And you'd be joined by 14,000 brand new uninsured immigrants, every single day.

You'd have a chorus of uninterested, blase, strictly unaware people from the CSA continually telling their Congressmen that everything was ok - nobody's suffering unduly. And you'd be pissed as hell - at your ignorant neighboring states, Congress, and the media too - for not getting the enormity of the problem out to the whole population in plain talk, and dealing with it like humane beings.

You'd say this: what does it take for the world's beacon of freedom and prosperity - the shining light - to recognize an abyss of a problem and simply, communally, definitively deal with it? Who are the people who deny this? Who are the leaders to defer solutions for private gain? Or journalists and opinion-makers to soft-soap the immediacy of the problem? Why are we so far from being able to live together, as we've done for 200 years?

So don't be surprised if posters here scream at you, at the top of their lungs, that you're clueless reprobates for blithely sweeping them under the rug. Someday they just might.

Thank you, thank you Mr. Reich. You and Joe Conason are the only writers here to take this crisis seriously, and transcend Obama-entary. Your urgency and acumen are extremely appreciated, and most important on this site.

Know anyone who has a Lexus and no health coverage - and wants it desperately?

BTW - the numbers are accurate. And for not knowing that, you just might be a clueless reprobate.

Nothing you said was true - the uninsured are not just young people - they're increasingly people who have lost a job later in life and can't get insurance for being "pre-existing". They're whole families living on paycheck to paycheck. Illegal aliens have nothing to do with it- that's a right wing hogwash.

14,000 per day losing insurance. NOBODY gives up insurance by choice.

If you don't want to have mandatory coverage, then propose another solution that actually addresses the problem. Be a man. Be sentient. Propose ways to get the same health care that you have for the millions who can't afford it. The tens of millions. The states-full of people. The fucking walking wounded who can't.

I know, I'm one of them - you fucking clueless reprobate. That's apparently not a choice either.

You ain't seen melodramatic till you've got a dire health condition that can't be taken care of, for lack of funds or proper insurance/coverage. Or a love one dies because of same. You do know people die from this condition. right? You know how to take your head out of the sand, or other places?

You can parse the subject anyway you want. But the millions who are hurting will not appreciate your mandarinism. If you're unaware of people in this boat, then get familiar with them. Look into the subject instead of hiding behind your wall of complacency. Sounds like you've got all the time, and comfort, in the world to do so. Use it well.

The answer to your question is this:

by you treating huge portions of the population as subhuman, it indelibly makes you one too. Period.

What on earth is circular about the direct facts of tens of millions of people not being able to afford healthcare? What could possibly be more dramatic, melo- or not, about losing life or limb because of being in a different class from, say, you?

We all pay for roads, which everyone drives on, fire and police service which benefit every single person - all sorts of stopgaps to chaos or inconvenience, large or small. There is nothing "inconvenient" about lack of healthcare - it cuts to the core of civil and functioning society.

Our healthcare system is in chaos. That's documented at all levels of income and advantage - insurance companies denying proper procedures, galloping jobless going naked, public health outlets being closed (in California). You can choose to ignore it, but you are flat out in denial, nothing more nor less. It's your job as a human to act humanely. There but for the grace of god go I.

Or does that adage not include you?

Same question.