The Time for Injustice Has Gone.

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"There were those who said this is an old injustice, and there is no need to hurry. But 95 years have passed since the 15th amendment gave all Negroes the right to vote.

And the time for waiting is gone.

There were those who said smaller and more gradual measures should be tried. But they had been tried. For years and years they had been tried, and tried, and tried, and they had failed, and failed, and failed.

And the time for failure is gone.

There were those who said that this is a many-sided and very complex problem. But however viewed, the denial of the right to vote is still a deadly wrong.

And the time for injustice has gone." -

Lyndon Baines Johnson,
36th President of the United States
upon signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.



Change "vote" for "medical care" and "Negroes" to "working class Americans" and this statement exactly desribes both the history and the current state of healthcare in this country - the system is for the "haves" and the "have nots" like those Negro voters have systematically been excluded from access.

Unlike the current administration's approach to the issue of medical care however, LBJ did not settle for small changes around the edges of the issues of civil rights and voting rights - as he observed "they had been tried for years and years and years and they had failed and failed and failed."

Johnson's passage of the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act (along with others such as Medicare and Medicaid) was a monumental and an extraordinarily difficult task - moreover it was a highly unpopular task in the South and in his home state of Texas - yet he did not shirk the responsibility or delay and dilute the reform.

Had it not been for the Vietnam War, Lyndon Baines Johnson might well have been one of our greatest Presidents, perhaps worthy of becoming the elusive "fifth face" on Mount Rushmore.

I wonder what Johnson would think of the current administration and the current United States Senate which find it so easy to compromise cardinal prinicples just so they can pass any watered down bill that might be passed off as "health care reform"?

I wonder if he would have been so very willing to back a shamefully watered down HR3200 or whether he would have pushed and cajoled, arm twisted and shamed a reluctant Congress into doing the right thing by passing a bill guaranteeing health care to all Americans such as in HR676?


Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

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