Health Care for Buddhas

No matter which side one is on, we can all agree that the controversy about health care reform has sure gotten ugly. I make no secret about which side of the fence I'm on : I believe equal access to health care is a right, not a privilege. I base my beliefs not on any political platform but on the same principles and teachings that govern all my actions in life.

These are teachings born of the pristine blossom of Compassion and nurtured in the soil of understanding that all beings are exactly equal in their true Nature. They are the teachings that illustrate with perfect logic and reasoning that we are not separate from one another no matter what our senses tell us. We are interrelated, interconnected and interdependent. If we were ignorant of this fact before, haven't the poor economy, banking and housing crises been a clear demonstration of this principle, at least on an ordinary level?

The Buddha taught that we all suffer from self-absorption. Those who defend the status quo and protest the health care reform proposals so passionately are displaying the same habitual tendency we all have: Me first. We think that when we meet our own needs we'll be happy. We leave others to fend for themselves. We cloak our selfish tendencies in prideful talk of "pulling oneself up from the bootstraps," and perpetuate the myth that those of us who have things like health insurance have worked harder than those of us who don't. We feel entitled. Or perhaps special in the eyes of God.

All of which completely ignores cause and effect. Pull a single thread and the entire argument comes undone : If someone who has worked very hard to get a good job with good insurance suddenly loses that job and that insurance, what happened? Did they stop working hard? Did they stop being special? The Buddha taught that everything we experience is the result of our past actions. Things like good jobs and good insurance are the karmic result of having taken care of others-- of countless lifetimes of generosity and compassion for others.

We don't see those efforts of course. We see only the illusion of "I worked hard in this life and got this thing." And that very ignorance of cause and effect leads us to do terrible things. Like act without compassion. Deny health care to others. Keep our hands in our pockets when someone right next to us is drowning.

So in time we become the other, and the cycle continues.

We don't openly acknowledge it, but in denying others health care, we are consenting to deepening their suffering. The result is a rationing of health care and what underlies it--rationing of compassion. I'm convinced that even the angriest town hall crasher could not look a gravely ill person in the eye and tell them they're not worth the only drug or procedure that will save their life. It's like road rage-- anonymous, faceless, easier.

No one would dream of rallying to close fire or police departments even though they cost a lot of money. Why would we treat health care differently? We can do this. We can shake ourselves awake enough to see that millions and millions of people should not be abandoned, and that not a single one of us is safe unless we are all safe.