"Sicko"

Tonight I was at my grandpa's house and he was watching Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" about the healthcare system in the U.S. versus other first-world countries. Now granted, I have to take Moore's work with a grain of salt, but what I saw absolutely disgusted and infuriated me. I love America and the freedoms that we have here, but in some ways it has and continues to disappoint me. It is said that you can measure a nation by the way it treats its worst-off citizens. We are the most affluent country in the world (I think), and yet we can't afford to provide basic healthcare for everyone? We can't afford to give every young adult the opportunity at a college education? We can't afford to establish better public schools? We can't afford to raise the minimum wage to an amount that someone can actually live on? It's a difficult reality to recognize, but perhaps by taking off our rose-colored glasses we can make a change. Or is it too late? Is America so controlled by big businesses and people with power and money that we forget about compassion and loyalty towards the citizens upon whose backs it has been raised? Murderers and rapists get full medical care and an ample supply of food in jail, yet we can't extend that 'luxury' to the homeless who never commited a crime? Our veterans suffering from PTSD and other such war-caused afflictions often lose their jobs due to illness and live on the streets as beggars, and we turn a blind eye. People who are dying are thrown out of hospitals because they cannot provide proof of insurance. What has happened to us? More importantly, how do we change it?