Two Tears for the Healthcare System…Hip Hip…

One tear is there for all of us who suffer cancer’s curse
The second tear reserved for those who lack substantial purse.
Because the systems old and well established in its way
The first tear is oblivious to how the second pays.

The doctors treat the both of them the same or so it seems
Except the rich get courtesy the second shafting beams
To rich it’s quite invisible, or easy to deny
But clearly seen from poverty – accepted with a sigh.

Changing rules for entry to the first tier are sublime –
They ‘birth’ to ‘money’ shifted back in 1789
When Frenchmen cut the heads off landed Peers who had their cake
But kept the nouveau-riche out whose earned fortunes they’d create.

‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ they cried
And for ideals so proudly held so many people died
But really what was happening was just a shift in power
As access to the upper crust was changed within an hour.

In Britain they resisted such excesses as premature
Though quite appalled with money from the manufacturers
But revolution of the industry could not be stopped
So landed folks relented – power’s access soon was bought.

Americans revolted from the Brits in Ninety-Four
And bought the French ideals – tweaked them up a little more
To Yanks pursuit of happiness was seen to be the thing
Then told the Brits they had no further interest in their King.

Canucks were loyal to the Brits up north of forty-nine
But slowly drifted to the lifestyle lived below that line
They seized the native lands the same but did it with no fuss
And then entrenched a second tier defining ‘them’ and ‘us’.

Rejecting race and landed birth as route to primary tier
Especially when new marriages made grouping-lines less clear
Canucks have made a system where their money is the thing
To get them out of second tier, and let them play at king.

The problem is, the healthcare system is imploding fast
So rich are pressing for a two-tiered system for their class
It really won’t take much as such as system’s now in place
The first tier gets the courtesy, the second tear disgrace.

As Englishman I spent my life in first tier luxury
But as I owned my Cree side more authentic grew to be.
The cues I gave to intake-workers guarding health-care gates
Enabled me to walk the road the second-tear man takes.

Had it not been for ‘error’ intake workers seldom make
And then correction later to reclassify my case
I never would have seen that two streams clearly now exist
Or felt the pain of those who live their lives on second list.

Surviving where some others walk the cancer-road to death
Is difficult enough as now I take a second breath
But when I realize my life was spared outside all this
I could have died if I’d been sick and still on ‘second’ list.

In school we read how Prince and Pauper roles they chose to switch
And sang in ‘Penzance’ of two kids at birth a nurse-maid switched
I wonder what would happen if at half-life God said ‘stop!’
And switched the rich and poor to live with what the others got.

‘The money’s for the diligent who God will bless and help’
So ‘scorn the disenfranchised without money-votes who yelp’
‘Stay in the place which you deserve’ and ‘eat the crumbs from us’
‘Or join in scrambling to the top with front seats on the bus’.

The socialists claim righteousness – prosperity disdain
The money-moguls prosper but no righteous ways they claim
The two lined up in ditches shoot each other ’cross the road
But why not walk together up the Way with courage bold?

To me it’s ‘God’s economy’ he had in mind at first –
To prosper while for righteousness we hunger and we thirst
Not either-or but both with God as central source and power
But we would rather seize, and hold, and all the rest turn sour.

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