America the beautiful?

According to the Children’s Defense Fund, “Every 41 seconds, a child is born in the United States without health insurance. Already this year, we have seen tragic cases of how a lack of health insurance for a child can have fatal results.”

Many of the children I teach, and some in my family, are in this situation. Most of the children in this category have parents who are working, on jobs with little or no health benefits, like two of my daughters. As one of them said to me not long ago, “I could quit my job, get on welfare, and at least the kids would have Medicaid, but why should I have to do that?”

Why, indeed?

What does it say about our nation that we are unwilling (not unable) to provide health care or at least health coverage for all our children? That, in many places, our children do not have decent, safe school buildings? That the children of the poor are more likely to go to school in buildings that are poorly maintained, poorly equipped, poorly supplied, and poorly staffed?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

…with liberty and justice for all