This comment appeared on Dave’s post (Capitalism Makes Me Sick)on Thursday:
… I have no health care. I can't afford it. I lost my entire home, everything I own in the world, save my bird, dog, and husband. And a few scraps. I worked hard for it all. VERY HARD.NO savings, we lived pay check to pat check, and still do....what little we had was taken up to buy little things like food, and shelter.
But, I make just enough money to not get a single lick of help. Not that I want help, or need it, because I can do for myself…
…Americans, as free citizens, need to take personal responsibilty. Stop suckling the federal teet and grab their own piece of the pie. Jenn
Jenn is a conservative. She doesn’t believe in government hand-outs. She thinks that folks need to suck it up and "grab their own piece of the pie."
Grab my own piece of the pie, Jenn? Which pie would that be? The pie that is served at the GOP fundraisers I would not be allowed to attend even if I had the two grand to buy a ticket? The pie that is heaped upon the plates of retiring energy executives? The pie that is baked up and served to Exxon and Chevron every time I pull up to the gas pump and cough up $90 to fill my tank? I’m sorry…that pie is so far beyond my grasp that I’d have to have a twenty-foot extension ladder and arms ten feet long to come close to laying a finger on it, much less grab a piece.
And Jenn "has no health care." She states this as if it were a perfectly normal, acceptable fact. As if it were the most natural thing in the world that our country believes it sets the gold standard for medical advancements, yet only the privileged few are in a position to take advantage of our proud dedication to the science of healing . Only those who are so rich, they don’t have to worry about insurance--they can just whip out the checkbook, inscribe some digit followed by an incredible number of zeroes, and jump right to the front of the line for a heart, a liver, the latest AIDS treatments, the most promising new cancer drugs. They are the ones who benefit. While those of us who are lucky enough to be at the mercy of the insurance companies wait months for an HMO-sanctioned examination of a problem we thought acute enough to actually call and make an appointment to have investigated. And everyone else, those who have no insurance at all, can go scratch.
Let me ask you this, Jenn with "no health care." When you get sick, when you drag yourself into a hospital emergency room so ill you wonder how you made it through the doors, or you are transported through the doors after a traffic accident or an act of God; who is going to pick up the tab, Ms. I-Don’t-"Want-Help-Or-Need-It-Because-I-Can-Do-For-Myself"? There’s the rub, my dear. Any one of us is just a traffic accident or a catastrophic illness away from not being able to "do for ourselves." If you find yourself in that frightening but all-too-conceivable position, will you be satisfied with the level of "uh-oh..another deadbeat" care you are bound to receive? Will you be happy to receive the level of medical care reserved for the indigent--where they patch you together as cheaply as possible and kick your butt out the door? Will you be willing to sacrifice your very life for that conservative credo of "I can do for myself"?
The American Dream isn’t what it once was, Jenn. The middle class is being squeezed out of existence. There was a time when we could hold down jobs that paid decent living wages, be rewarded with things like employer-paid medical insurance, pensions, vacations, time-and-a-half for overtime…all those things that have become dirty words to the big-money controlled, Republican "conservative" world of twenty-first century America.
I’d love to grab for that pie, Jenn. But I have both hands tied behind my back, shackles on my ankles, and a gag in my mouth. Courtesy of the current ultra-conservative, "Big Business Above All" administration.
And, thanks to the health care culture they’ve advanced for the last six years, I can’t even afford a Xanax to make me at least feel that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.
