Why does 5-year-old in bad shape after crash with a Chiefs coach need a GoFundMe?

The family of the 5-year-old who is fighting for her life after a car crash involving Chiefs assistant coach Britt Reid responded to this tragedy as so many other Americans in this situation have been forced to do: They started a GoFundMe page to pay for little Ariel’s medical care and to replace the wages of her mother, who is a single parent.

Yes, the Chiefs should write this family a check without delay, and if head coach Andy Reid’s son was guilty of driving under the influence, his future in football is the least of his problems.

But for just a minute, let’s look beyond the individuals involved here.

This little girl’s loved ones have only had to resort to a GoFundMe because this country has fought universal insurance coverage as if it were a plague.

(Or wait, actually, we’ve fended off health care for all far more seriously than we have tried to kill COVID-19.)

And unlike all but a handful of other countries, all of them extremely poor, we have no nationally-mandated paid parental leave.

It’s great that so many strangers are pitching in to help Ariel, sending dollars and kind, heartfelt messages to her and her family.

But only in the wealthiest country in the world do so many have to count on charity to pay for medical care. Our bizarre insistence on freedom from the tyranny of easy access to the care that every one of us needs, and that most of the rest of the world has, is still making medical treatment considerably more expensive and less efficient than it is in other countries.

All of you who fought to hobble the Affordable Care Act, hoping to kill it rather than ever trying to improve it, have succeeded in keeping Ariel from the kind of coverage that she and everyone else deserves.

And if you’re really praying for Ariel’s mom, as many of you are, then send up a flare, too, for the paid parental leave that only Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland and the United States lack.

Not that it would have made a difference in this case, but there would without question be fewer alcohol-related accidents if Americans had better coverage for drug and alcohol treatment, too. In many places in this country, you can be on a waiting list for such treatment for years.

Ariel, who just turned 5, has swelling and bleeding in her brain and has to yet to regain consciousness. And what’s even worse is that we as a society have yet to become conscious that no family should ever have to put out a virtual tin cup to fund the recovery of a loved one.