TED演讲:美国人在健康问题上的共识是什么(6)

 　　Listening to her, I felt this familiar panic rise in me, the residue¹ of my own childhood. 听着她的描述，我感到熟悉的恐慌在我心中升起，来自我童年的阴影。

　　When I was 10 years old, my father lay on the living room floor in the grips of one of his many depressions. 当我10岁时，我父亲躺在客厅的地板上，被抑郁笼罩着。

　　As I crouched² next to him, he told me that he wanted to kill himself. 当我蹲在他旁边时，他告诉我他想自杀。

　　My father lived, but he struggled to work. 我父亲活下来了，但他苦于工作。

　　And my family survived, but we teetered, down one paycheck, relying on my mom's schoolteacher salary. 我的家人幸存下来，但我们摇摇欲坠，靠着一份薪水，依赖我母亲学校的工资度日。

　　Even as a little kid, I knew we lived in the shadow of financial and emotional collapse³. 即便是个小孩，我知道我们生活在经济和情感奔溃的阴影中。

　　This is really hard to say, because it's taken me 25 years to be honest with myself that this is why I do this work: 这真的难以启齿，因为我花了25年的时间来对自己坦诚，这就是我做这个工作的原因：

　　knowing that my father needed health care to recover, but to be healthy, 知道我父亲需要医疗保健来恢复，但要保持健康，

　　my family needed something else, we needed a decent income; 我家人还需要其他东西，我们需要一份体面的收入；

　　and knowing, as so many do more than I, that panic when the basics threaten to slip away. 还知道，就如很多人更能体会的，那种对基本的东西要溜走时的恐慌。

　　To the voters in our focus groups, the solutions were straightforward⁴. 对我们焦点小组的选民来说，解决方案很简单。

　　As one of those white Republican women in Charlotte said, 就像夏洛特的一位白人共和党女性说的，

　　"Instead of putting all this money into health care, put it into affordable⁵ housing. “与其把所有钱都投在医疗保健，不如投一些到可负担的住房中。

　　You know, like, take it and distribute it differently." 就像，拿着它，用不同的方式来分配它。”

　　It turns out that when you have the right language and you ask the right questions, 结果表明当你有了正确的沟通语言，你问了正确的问题，

　　the answers become remarkably⁶ clear and unanimous. 答案变得明显清楚和一致。

　　What we know is that, despite all the noise, the plan for health care in this country is that there is no plan. 我们知道的是，尽管有所有这些噪音，这个国家的医疗保健计划就是没有一个计划。

　　But we have something more powerful than any politician's bill, any candidate's platform, any think tank's policy statement. 但我们有比任何政治家的法案、任何候选人平台、任何智囊团的政策声明更强大的东西。

　　We have our common sense and our common experience. 我们有我们的常识和我们的共同经历。

1 residue   

n.残余，剩余，残渣

参考例句：

• Mary scraped the residue of food from the plates before putting them under water.玛丽在把盘子放入水之前先刮去上面的食物残渣。
• Pesticide persistence beyond the critical period for control leads to residue problems.农药一旦超过控制的临界期，就会导致残留问题。

2 crouched   

v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He crouched down beside her. 他在她的旁边蹲了下来。
• The lion crouched ready to pounce. 狮子蹲下身，准备猛扑。

3 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

4 straightforward   

adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的

参考例句：

• A straightforward talk is better than a flowery speech.巧言不如直说。
• I must insist on your giving me a straightforward answer.我一定要你给我一个直截了当的回答。

5 affordable   

adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的

参考例句：

• The rent for the four-roomed house is affordable.四居室房屋的房租付得起。
• There are few affordable apartments in big cities.在大城市中没有几所公寓是便宜的。

6 remarkably   

ad.不同寻常地，相当地

参考例句：

• I thought she was remarkably restrained in the circumstances. 我认为她在那种情况下非常克制。
• He made a remarkably swift recovery. 他康复得相当快。