You assume that lefty writer Barbara Ehrenreich is, what the Forsytes would call, a warm woman. Her best-selling travelogue of working with the minimum-wage set, Nickeled and Dimed, has made her more than nickels and dimes. It is said to be required reading in freshman orientation at several colleges. So when her son Ben Ehrenreich decides that “we” can’t afford the cost of fixing a broken ankle, you have to wonder. Says Ben:
My girlfriend had broken her ankle and needed surgery. She was between jobs and between health insurance plans. We couldn’t afford the thousands of dollars the surgery would have cost at a private hospital. So I bundled her up at 4 o’clock one cold morning in January, drove to Boyle Heights and checked her in at the emergency room at L.A. County-USC.
Now I always thought that the practical reason for family was the security of people who care about you. When a member of the family hits a pothole then the family rallies round to help fix the jalopy.
But apparently not in the Ehrenreich clan. And apparently Ben’s girl friend didn’t think to avail herself of the opportunity of continuing to pay for her health insurance while she was “between jobs.” And apparently Ben didn’t offer to pay for her hospital bills.
What is it about these progressives? Look at the chain of irresponsibility here. First of all you have the girl friend, who doesn’t think it worthwhile to continue her health insurance payments. She is too cheap to make a proper provision for accident or ill health.
Then you have Ben, a journalist and novelist, presumably enjoying the favors of this young woman. He is too cheap to help out the woman with whom, Planned Parenthood aside, he could at any moment share the blessings of future parenthood.
And what about mother Barbara, the successful writer of left-wing bestsellers? Where was she while all this was going on?
Why do these wealthy, educated left-wing people expect us to pay for their health care?
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