$75 FIRE FIGHTER FEE... IS THIS AMERICAN?

In America the government is supposed to be for the people. This explains the immense amount of taxes Americans already pay to their government, which is justified because the government uses that money to provide for the people. This is why I was disgusted to learn about an incident that has been happening in Tennessee. Fire Fighters standing by with the homeowners watching the house and all of their possessions burn to the ground all because the family did not pay the $75 fire fighter fee for their county. (I guess property taxes don't count.) "In a recent incident, the owners begged to make an exception, saying they were ready to pay whatever it took to put out the blaze. But they were told it was too late." (RT NEWS, 2012).
If you go on to read the rest of this article you will see that in California police and firemen watched as a man drowned and did nothing because he didn't have the right certificates for proper water rescue.
A few days after I learned about the Tennessee incident I was watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. When Dee was hospitalized for a heart attack, she was kicked out because she did not have health insurance. Dennis (her brother) did not know you had to pay for hospitals. He said "you don't pay firefighters to save your life, why should you have to pay for hospitals?" He had a good point, when it comes to saving a life, it shouldn't even be a question. Now I can go on to make an argument for universal health care, but I'm going to go back to my original focus. The way our society is going, Dennis is almost wrong when he says "you don't pay firefighters to save your life." The United States is straying more and more from it's original beliefs of human equality and on a government by and for the people. This problem raises awareness to the fact that our society values $75 dollars over a human life or doing the right thing. We are caught up in lawyers, lawsuits, and all these ways to get away with things all so we can have more money. The tragedy is that in doing so we give up our once most cherished morals and values.