This election tomorrow is about the social safety net. Reps have already gutted it and want to do away with it entirely.
There are stories that need to be told. Please tell them, most of us know people who the system has forgotten. These people matter and they are suffering.
I know several people who have it terrible right now, I'd like to share Jenny's story. Jenny is a friend from my young adult life (Early 90s), she was always the pretty girl, a model actually, she was in a couple rock bands and could sing and play several instruments. While she never became a star she was always a hard worker, she worked for a local company most of her life and was able to save for retirement. Everything was going fine for her up until about 10 years ago, both of her parents dies within a couple years after getting sick and spending most of their lives savings on medical bills. Shortly after burying her parents Jennifer was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, everything would change quickly. It wasn't long before she wasn't able to work any longer, and her health insurance no longer covered enough so she was dipping into her savings to pay for treatment and meds. She sold her home to move into a small apartment. She never married and had no siblings, so there was simply no one to care for her.
The state she is in now is heart breaking. She's flat broke, she burned through over $150,000 on her medical bills. The state does next to nothing for her. There's a 2 year wait to get into subsidized housing even though she's now fully disabled. So they put her 25 miles outside of town in a seedy trailer park. They charge her $450 a month for an awful trailer that doesn't even have hand rails for handicapped accessibility to the bathroom and shower, she can't get in and out of the bath tub so she washes herself with a wash cloth. They send someone to check on her once a week. For food, they won't give her food stamps, they instead give her 1 frozen meal a day, they drop off the paper plates wrapped up on the first day of the month, if there are 30 days in that month she gets 30 plates, if there are 28 days that month she gets 28. The food is terrible, might be some turkey, carrots, and potatoes, maybe 800 calories and often it's the same exact meal every day for the month. Her utilities and co-pays eat the rest of her monthly disability payments and she simply doesn't buy the meds she needs for some things. She's living in squalor with no hope as her body fails her and the world forgets about her.
America can do better than this. Jenny is a good person and lived a good life, she deserves better, anyone deserves better. With how wealthy this country is, this cannot be allowed to continue. There are thousands of Jennys, maybe millions.
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