I enjoy professional sports as much as the next guy. I've been a fan of the National Football League for most of my life. I'm even willing to look past a lot of the nonsense, drama, etc., that is all too often associated with the league these days.
In this day and age when much of the talk around professional football involves players kneeling during the National Anthem, it's hard not to make one think about the priority and importance we give these men who have athletic talent. Though many of us find the anthem protests disrespectful and inappropriate, there are many other things done that demonstrate how skewed our priorities are.
Listening to "Football Night in America" tonight, I heard mention that a player who has already missed a few games this season was reported to have a sore foot. Said player, in just the few hours between the end of the game and the beginning of "Football Night" had already had an x-ray and received a diagnosis. Because his foot was sore.
This just left me wondering, if the person involved was an American veteran, would he or she have had an x-ray so quickly? How long would he or she have to wait to be seen? If we're going to put this level of importance on the health of one group of Americans, shouldn't it be those willing to fight and die to protect our nation and our freedom?
I know the reasons why; the player is a multi-millionaire athlete playing in a multi-billion-dollar business on a team that has invested a large sum of money in his ability to play to make millions in ticket, merchandise and other sales. This is not a knock on capitalism. I love capitalism, it is truly the best economic system known to man. But it just seems to me that adjustments should be made when it comes to providing health care.
The topic of veterans' health care pops in and out of the media quite often. Myself, I don't think it remains there as much as it should. When my journalism career was full-time, I spent a great deal of time and effort covering veterans and the Department of Veterans Affairs. What became clear to me is that the VA, despite having several good people with great intentions working within the system, is too bloated a bureaucracy to truly serve vets and our country.
A recurring theme I often heard when covering the VA was that its goal is to put more of its allocated dollars into veterans' health care. It is my opinion that the American health care system, as well as every veteran, would be better off if the VA's focused was on helping vets in other ways, while putting the bulk of veterans' health care back into the private sector. We could save billions by eliminating the overhead and bureaucracy of the VA if we just let vets choose which doctors they see where.
The value of one's life should not depend on who is paying that person, or the role you play in the world. The professional athlete has seemingly unlimited access to the necessary healthcare to not only survive, but thrive within his or her industry. Why wouldn't we, as taxpayers, want the same thing for those who fight for us?
While a team's ownership, or the league, have invested in the professional athlete to get the best performance out of them, we have done the same thing. We have invested in our national defense, the technology, the equipment and the training of our service members. My hunch - which I have neither investigated nor confirmed - is that we do care for these men and women while they are still actively enlisted, but why should that change when they leave? Do professional athletes lose their outstanding health care when they retire?
I really don't know the answer to that. I just know how ridiculous and shameful it seems to me that there are waiting lists - including secret waiting lists created by bureaucrats to protect their own interests - for our warriors doing actual battle to protect us while a guy who can run fast in meaningless competitions can see top doctors on the spur of the moment.
Take care of yourself and thank you for reading.
