Most college students are at a point in their lives where they have to forgo health care. They hit that age when they are no longer under mom or dad’s health insurance, and they don’t have a good enough job that is willing to provide health care. But who cares? They’re in the prime of their lives and most college students feel indestructible. That’s how they feel anyway, until something really bad happens to them.

Life’s unpredictable that way. You’re just moseying along on life’s journey when suddenly you get into that terrible car accident, or you come down with that debilitating disease that you just didn’t expect to happen to you.

Horror stories like these generate real concern for students who don’t have health care because most students will be devastated if something bad were to ever happen to them.

“It would be terrible if something that drastic happened to me,” Mark Lorentzen, senior liberal studies major, said. “The medical expenses alone would probably put me in debt. And I don’t want to burden my parents with the bill.”

Michael Moore’s new film “Sicko” was a real eye opener into how abysmal our health care is in this country. The movie does a good job documenting the hardships people who don’t have health insurance in this country go through.

For example, one lady in the movie traveled to Cuba to buy medication that she couldn’t afford in America. The medication cost hundreds of dollars here, but only five pesos in Cuba, which is roughly around 5 cents in American dollars.

Why can this happen in the richest and most advanced nation in western society? We have the police to protect us from crime, we have firefighters to protect us from fires, but what do we have to protect us from sickness and getting hurt? And please don’t say HMOs.

Why is it allowed for privatized companies to make a profit off the sick and the dying while police and firefighters are publicly funded?

The general consensus on this campus is that health care should be provided to everyone who needs it and that no one has the right to make a profit of the sick and the dying.

“As a humanist I believe that a human being should have access to health care regardless of his income. It bothers me that money is the deciding factor on who gets care or not,” said Shawn Preston, senior English major.

The lack of care in this country stems from our capitalistic nature – to watch out only for ourselves and turn a blind eye to the problems of others. It is an attitude we have to change if we hope to ever achieve equal health care for all.

A Yale economics professor on the Oprah show one day said that it would cost $900 million to provide universal health care in this country, which roughly equates to three months of what we pay for in the Iraq War.

People shouldn’t mind spending tax money on something that would benefit the people, and a lot of Sac State students agree as well.

“It’s a good idea, if paying my taxes go to something useful. I’d rather pay for that than Iraq which I think is BS,” said Reza Saeidi, a biology major.

Discussing this on a newspaper at Sac State isn’t going to automatically spark a movement for universal health care, but hopefully it will at least get the ball rolling.

This is a question everyone will eventually have to ask themselves: Do we really live in a country where a janitor has the same rights to health care as a CEO?

Because we really shouldn’t wait until something bad happens before we decide to do something about our health and safety.

Charles Weinstein can be reached at [email protected]