Healthcare Crisis Tears at Fabric of Holiday Traditions
by Donna Smith
Donna Smith is a community organizer for the California Nurses Association and National Co-Chair for the Progressive Democrats of America Healthcare Not Warfare campaign.
December 19, 2009
Our elected officials in Washington, DC, are rushing to finish their work and get home for the holidays. Many of the people who elected them aren't so richly blessed. Millions and millions of Americans do not get the Norman Rockwell holiday scene played out in their lives because millions and millions of people have been left financially and physically broken and battered by the healthcare crisis.
.... for millions of people in this country, the holidays are not the time of joy depicted so openly on commercial television or in advertising everywhere you look. For millions of us, the holidays are reminders that we live in a selfish and cruel society where survival of the fittest is worshiped by the ruling class -- and that ruling class includes those in our elected government bodies who relied on us for their means to riches and the security we cannot embrace for ourselves.
I wanted this Congress and this President to care and to work hard to make sure my future offered dignity and honor for the struggle of millions who cannot achieve what they have been freely given from my labors. My work gave you comfort. My work gave you holidays. And all you can give me is a lukewarm nod to some health reform measure that makes you richer and broadens the control of health insurance giants over my life? Sad.
And I am not excluding the Republicans from blame here. Quite the contrary. They have lied to the American people and said they care about those on Medicare. What they really care about is the votes of those on Medicare. Beyond that they hate Medicare as one of those evil "government run" healthcare plans they so abhor. Make no mistake about it, when it was time to hear a Medicare for all type reform, Republicans and most Democrats wanted nothing more to do with it. Republicans didn't care if the entire Medicare program was gutted so long as they used the perceived "cuts" to the program as sound bite fodder.
This healthcare reform effort in the U.S. Congress has been a disgusting display of the rich protecting the interests of the rich. And all at my expense, quite literally.
I will work to just stay afloat and to buy the insurance I will be forced to purchase when I would far rather pay taxes for the healthcare I need under a real reform plan.
Please read the full article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/19-5