RANT: The Health Care Debate Make Me Sick

The debate over health care makes me so sick; I could not get health insurance due to a pre-existing condition. Honestly. My girlfriend said it best "Liberals protest war and Conservatives protest health insurance?" It makes me so ill.

In all this debate about “death panels”, “public options” and “outraged town hall audiences", one thing has not been spoken about nearly enough. There are 45.7 million people uninsured in this country.

45.7 MILLION.

I have yet to hear Fox News, Sean Hannity, Keith Olberman, MSNBC, Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews or Glenn Beck in all of the back and forth with all their paid experts discussing the ins and out of the “Health care debate”, bring up that point. From what I see on “the news”, most of the people in these town halls bitching about health insurance are people WITH health insurance.

“I don’t want to lose my right to choose.” A relative of mine told me recently.

At least you have a choice.

If thing does not happen, if it gets kyboshed, 45.7 million of our fellow Americans will not be insured. 45.7 million Americans living in Texas, Alaska, Florida, New York, Illinois, Red states, Blue States, the South, the East Coast, West Coast, Mid West, Great Plaines, will go with out health insurance. 45.7 Million Americans will run the risk of getting sick and having no way to pay for it.

Let me tell my story. I moved to Chicago and got a job working for a small business. You know one of those small businesses that Republicans love trying to “save” while they give tax breaks to huge multi-national corporations. The business was so small, that even with me as its only employee; it could not afford to give me health insurance. And while I was paid enough to live on, I didn’t really have the extra cash for a couple hundred dollars a month for health insurance. I had that job for five years.

I was not a degenerate. I wasn’t some “welfare mother”. I wasn’t someone “too lazy to get a job”. I was a full time employee, working a 35-40 a week, that had no health insurance. I didn’t get sick. I got the occasional cold, and took aspirin or what ever, but never anything I had to be hospitalized for. I was lucky.

I don’t think my story is a unique situation. I was once was one of those 45.7 million. I think that many many many more of the 45.7 million people in country are like I was, as opposed to stereotypes proposed by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. Hard working men and women, who have a job, maybe two job, but do not have health insurance. People who may not be as lucky as I was.

So when you listen to this debate, “about how insurance companies can’t compete in the market place with a government run insurance company” or how “Obama wants to kill grandma” remember what is really at stake.

45.7 million Americans, like me, like my sister now that her company has downsized, that do not have health insurance. 45.7 million people who could care less about Obama bringing us to socialism. 45.7 million people who don’t know and don’t care what a “public option” is. They just want to be able to see a doctor if they get sick.

And if you don’t care about 45.7 million Americans, citizens of the country you claim to love so much, then you are just a horrible human being. I don’t know how you sleep at night. Most likely its with the Ambien you got with your awesome health insurance. The health insurance 45.7 million of your fellow countrymen are not lucky enough to have.

Jason