Am I my Brothers Keeper?

With the healthcare bill on course to be rejected in America, I can't help but see the majority of the American public as primitive and foolish. How ironic that Britain, the country that they shook off as oppressive and uncaring, would have a progressive and perfectly equal system of healthcare. I have absolutely no worries at all if I'm injured, there's no tiers of care depending on what you've paid and no worries of sorting out insurance documents. As a country we like to moan about the NHS but seriously, its a life saver. IT's literally something we take completely for granted, it has saved my life with surgery that there is no chance my parents would have been able to afford. How is one of the most advanced countries in the world struggling with this? A common argument is that people shouldn't be forced to have healthcare and contribute to healthcare for the poor. I'm not getting into the ins and outs of the actual bill and how it works but the consensus is that basically, rich Americans don't want to pay for the poor Americans to have life saving healthcare. But that's when my laughing stopped because we are no different...

Despite wide reaching and hugely successful results from the introduction of a welfare state, it still receives bad press. I know it isn't perfect but its hard to argue it isn't progress from the literally Dickensian days of the Victorian era, we still find it hugely satisfying to blame benefit cheats and "scroungers". We enjoy condemning the system without realising the horrible place it brought us from. To what degree are we willing to help the needy, especially those who don't want to be helped. Imagine overnight you lost your whole support structure, your family friends, your house and your job. What would you do? Quite probably sit on the street in a helpless and drunken stupor in utter desperation and sadness. Just as the "rich you" would walk past, condemning you as a hopeless scrounger who isn't helping themselves.