posted by perkiset on Sep 13
“The public option is all but dead.”
“The White House braces for the loss of the public option.”
“Snowe will not support a public option.”
I have some friends. They are married. “Good conservatives.”
They are right along the party line.
They cannot afford normal insurance, they’re self employed.
They’ve about an 15K deductible in a health savings account
They cannot afford 15K today. Not even close.
They argue with PinkHat and I vehemently against the handout and wastefulness of a public option, or frankly all “entitlements.”
Recently, the wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Her eyes drawn wide from a horrible realization.
Her cancer is “curable.”
Her health savings account will not be nearly enough.
She seems in slow motion, her eyes glazed.
She realizes that there is no option.
She knows she is going to die.
Just a couple days ago, another very similar situation pops out of nowhere. My friends. No option. Not enough money. No chance of insurance now. No chance of getting the treatment she needs. The confusion and fear are palpable. The disbelief is heartbreaking.
Ironically, yesterday I spent the afternoon with one of my clients, one of the foremost radiation oncologists in the world.
He knows her situation.
He knows he can help her.
He knows he can’t help her.
Because of her economic situation.
He shakes his head with knowledge that is born of too many instances like this.
I have yet to meet a conservative that would die for the right to be protected from having the choice of public health insurance. Because of PinkHat’s and my involvement in the medical industry, we see way too much of this. Attitudes change starkly and absolutely when death is the result of the choices made. Frankly, even when it’s untenable back pain, chronic GI problems or migraines. It doesn’t matter. When the problem is ever present and there is no solution, attitudes change.
In fact, Sarah Palin is right. There are death panels. They are the boards of directors of insurance companies, they are the right wing talk show hosts and they are the conservatives that refuse to accept a public option or, simply, any form of real health care reform. They have decided that people should die because they affect the profitability of the insurance industry. They have decided my friends should die because a public option looks too much like “socialism.” Palin, Beck, Grassely, the right wing… perhaps even you have collectively decided the fate of hundreds of thousands of people. Fathers, mothers, lovers, children, friends, conservative, liberal, black, white, brown, Catholic, Jewish, atheists, hippies, politicians, surgeons, trash collectors. You and me.
You might want to schedule just a little extra time at the wash basin tonight before you try to sleep. Blood is so very difficult to wash off.
Will you participate in reloading the artillery against them?
Or will you be the kind of Christian nation that you claim to be?
Will you assist them, or will you simply let them suffer and die?
Or, God forbid, might you just be the next one to be crouching, eyes wide in fear, abandoned by an insurance industry that doesn’t find you profitable, asked by cowardly politicians to have “personal responsibility” and die like a “patriot” for the sake of a pseudo-philosophy designed to ensure the profitability of huge, multinational corporations … the unfortunate recipient of a bad call from an invisible, malignant death panel you helped create?
I would be so very pleased and deeply grateful knowing my tax dollars were going to keep you from such a fate.
Would you do the same for me?
Sleep well.
