Will Oliver Finally Get Health Care?

Barney Clark as Oliver Twist

Barney Clark as Oliver Twist

In what I recently discovered is the best selling novel of all time, Dickens famously writes,

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—

And then he adds,

–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

For liberals like myself, what we saw this past week invites a superlative degree of comparison. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.

On the one hand (the best of times), insurance sign-ups on the Obamacare exchanges passed the 7.1 million mark, meaning that the Affordable Care Act appears to have survived everything, both unrelenting opposition from the GOP and the website’s troubled rollout. When you add to this figure all the working poor who have signed up for expanded Medicare; all those 20-somethings who can stay on their parents’ plans; all those getting the extra benefits that Obamacare provides; and all those who now can rest confident that, regardless of life’s reversals, they will always have access to affordable healthcare, then you have an America that suddenly seems much more welcoming. Anyone who has a heart must be glad to see all Americans—well, most Americans—on their way to having health insurance.

On the worst of times front, we saw our conservative Supreme Court continue its steady march toward “one dollar, one vote” with its McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission ruling. As with the Citizens United decision, wealthy Americans will have plentiful opportunity to buy our democracy, and the New York Times tells us that more such rulings are on the way. In short, this past week the poor got something and the rich got something.

In today’s post, I’m focusing on the best of times. And as I’ve used Dickens in the past to comment on Obama’s outreach to our embattled middle and lower classes, I turn to the great Victorian novelist once again.

Think of those who have had to go without health insurance as Oliver Twist. Poor and vulnerable, they are in the grip of rapacious forces that threaten to destroy them. Then, almost miraculously, they find themselves supported by the Affordable Care Act, just as the wrongfully accused Oliver finds himself saved by the kindly Mr. Brownlow. In the case of Americans without healthcare, it appears that their fortunes have turned around when Obamacare is passed by Congress and signed by the president.

The story is not yet done, however. Relentless forces are at work and Oliver is not yet safe, getting pulled back into the life of the gutter. He has to be saved a second time (maybe this is the Supreme Court upholding the law), and even then he is not yet home free. Malevolent individuals continue to target him.

Why would a poor orphan boy be singled out this way? Why, for that matter, would certain politicians seems to have such an animus against the poor that they not only go after their health care but also seek to deprive them of food stamps and extended unemployment insurance?

In Oliver Twist the explanation lies in the vendetta that Oliver’s half brother has against him. I’m not sure what Paul Ryan’s explanation is, his Scroogean budget being another item that made this a worst of times week. (Food stamp and Pell cuts to further subsidize oil companies?!)

Dickens’ novel, of course, ends happily as Oliver is reunited with Mr. Brownlow. Think of him as the patient who can finally imagine treatment for the worrisome cough or the painful hip that has been making his life miserable. Think of the joy that comes with returning health.

When Dickens has the chance to describe such scenes, he holds nothing back. Here is Oliver reuniting with the old nurse who thought she had lost him for ever:

[Y]ielding to his first impulse, [Oliver] sprang into her arms.

“God be good to me!” cried the old lady, embracing him; “it is my innocent boy!”

“My dear old nurse!” cried Oliver.

“He would come back—I knew he would,” said the old lady, holding him in her arms. “How well he looks, and how like a gentleman’s son he is dressed again! Where have you been, this long, long while? Ah! the same sweet face, but not so pale; the same soft eye, but not so sad. I have never forgotten them or his quiet smile, but have seen them every day, side by side with those of my own dear children, dead and gone since I was a lightsome young creature.” Running on thus, and now holding Oliver from her to mark how he had grown, now clasping him to her and passing her fingers fondly through his hair, the good soul laughed and wept upon his neck by turns.

This is what those 7.1 million sign-ups mean. They are not a political abstraction but literally millions of people who have been living for years in anxiety and often pain. Imagine them safe in the arms of a nurse.

 

Previous posts on Dickens and American hard times:

Dickens, We Need You (and also FDR)

Dickens Children Expose Class Unfairness

What Dickens Would Say to Today’s GOP

E. W. Jackson, a Modern Day Bounderby

Are There No Emergency Rooms? 

Compassion for the Poor Is Not Enough

Joe Biden Debates Bounderby

Gingrich Auditions for a Dickens Villain 

Mitt Romney, an American Podsnap

Warren Buffet, Dickensian Philanthropist  

Hard Times in 1854, Hard Times in 2010

Forget Bootstrapism–We Need Each Other  

Obamacare to Tiny Tim’s Rescue 

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