This piece comes to us from Harold Pollack, a professor at the University of Chicago and a writer at the blog SameFacts.com.
I wonder what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would think about the current health reform debate. OK, I don’t really wonder. Here, for example, are his comments, apparently made here in Chicago:
–
Why have southern states have taken such a hard line that punishes so many people? I suspect the best explanation is complicated. Political party, the region’s historic legacy of racial inequality, the limited political influence of poor people –not least the word Obama in Obamacare — all surely play a role. Whatever the explanation, millions of the nation’s poorest people are locked out of basic health coverage.
If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, I am confident that he would be supporting causes such as North Carolina’s Moral Mondays movement, which is working to expand Medicaid. I wish they had more company. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has recently announced that poverty reduction would be a major theme of his potential 2016 presidential run. He didn’t earn much credibility on this subject last time around. If Romney is looking for his own “Sista Souljah moment” to confront his party’s excessively conservative base, he might start by urging Republican colleagues across the south to address this disgraceful situation.
