Most of us here have spent many hours writing, emailing, or calling our Representatives and Senators in regard to health care reform. By most accounts there is a solid majority that want, indeed need, substantive reform; and yet, if the media is to be believed, we are losing that argument.
My story is just another one to be added to the list of those SOL journals. One month after I was dropped from "full time" to "part time" at the grocery store where I worked (same number of hours btw) and lost my health care I ended up in the emergency room at Wishard Hospital and spent the next 30 days in ICU. Shortly after returning home the bills came. 1,000 for this, 2,000 for that, adding up to about 12,000 dollars...then came the big bill for $60,000. Try working on those bills on a grocery clerk's salary. Due to my physical condition I was forced into early retirement. Keeping my fingers crossed, I will be on Medicare early next year.
This is not meant to be a meta post, but I would like to point some fingers (and no, not that finger alone).
It is really easy to point out the crazies acting out at the various town hall meetings. And can you believe that a man was allowed at President Obama's town hall packing? And wasn't immediately arrested? Do these people really believe their fears? If so, they must have the collective IQ of 100 or so. Or they don't listen to the facts, just to Rush on the radio and Fox News otherwise.
It's also easy to point out Rush Limbaugh and the right wing radio hosts who stir up their listeners, many of them using racial undertones in their broadcasts. At least that's what I've been told since I don't have the stomach for their bile.
The typical conservative congressmen and women spout their platitudes about how they don't believe the birthers or the deathers; but it suits their agenda just fine if health care reform dies on the vine. Their agenda is to kill health care reform in order to bloody Obama. They put up numerous provisos to the bills being herded through the congressional committees and then object to the bill itself. We saw this with the stimulus package, with the net result of a watered down package.
Of course it is easy to point out the corporate world and their cronies, the lobby guys. With money they buy those who are in Congress to represent us, and gin up the anger of the crazies. The ads running on television today are full of deceit. Make an ad, run "ordinary folk" on the pictures, add some smarmy music so the people cannot tell what is real and what is not. These people, with the most to lose if real health care reform gets passed, are playing hardball. They will throw the kitchen sink if they think that will garner them one more vote.
That proverbial third finger I want to point at is our media. Think back a bit to late 2002 and early 2003 and how all the talking heads were oh so hyped up about invading Iraq; those opposed or even concerned about such war were either marginalized or even nonexistent. Think of the town halls that President Bush held in which protesters were not allowed to be in the same area. Where was the talk of "democracy in action"? It is too easy to infer that much of the trouble we find ourselves in is indeed the corporate media. If health care reform gets watered down too much or
is nonexistent, I'm going to blame corporate media.
Sorry this post is late and only 6 months until medicare...yeah!