Dear Mr. President:

September 5, 2009

Dear Mr. President:

My health is not for sale to Republican profit motivations.

In this year 2009 once again the cause of health care for people in this land has reared its ugly head. Even with the recent loss of 7 million jobs in this country there are those Legislators who decry expanded health care as Socialist and a scourge to be purged. Those 7 million jobs were typically attached to family households of 4 persons. Most private health insurance premiums are paid by employers on behalf of the employees. So go figure. There are potentially 28 million people in this country who might just now be losing their beloved private health insurance coverage. Since there are a lot of businesses that never paid for health insurance, we can easily half that number and still have a huge population of citizens newly without private health insurance.

A high school era buddy of mine is an early retiree. Such a person is old enough to consider stopping primary employment but who is not yet eligible for Medicare at age 65. He reports that his privately funded private health insurance coverage costs him and his wife $1850 per month. Excluding the annual cost increases that he says is on the order of 10% a year, he will pay nearly $200,000 between now and Medicare eligibility. And this is assuming that some catastrophic event doesn’t intervene and cause termination of the policy by the business that holds his health in their private hands.

President Obama stated his goals of creating a health care coverage overhaul that would allow everyone to have access to medical services before their conditions go critical and we have to fund their costly recovery via Medicaid. He did not specify how the legislation would be worded nor what exactly the Bill would contain. His plan allowed the Congress to work it our as a bi-partisan effort to help the growing population of families and individuals who had no access to medical services until they arrived at an emergency room and could not leave under their own power.

The Democratic legislators set to the task of crafting such a plan while the Republican legislators boycotted the process and said that the Democrats would have to proceed without them. How can it be that there are no Democrats living in Republican districts and states?. How can it be that no Republican constituent is without adequate private health insurance paid for by their employers? How can it be that access to medical treatment is a partisan issue worthy of universal objection by one particular political party?

Republican legislators need to hear from their Republican electoral base that they too need access to adequate affordable medical care. My health is not for sale to Republican profit motivations.

Sincerely,

Robert Carlson

Fear is Trump

Fear is Trump

The behaviors of people speaking against health care reform that would benefit millions of people made me realize that they are so afraid of the "death squads" allegedly in the health care reform legislation because it gives voice to the idea of the convenient death for a declining elderly parent or spouse and how that death would bring respite from years of the hearthache of caring for that loved one with Alzheimers, alcholism, Cancer-chemo, etc. The desire for escape is unthinkable and results in a cognitive dissonance and outpouring of anger and denial.

Each political party in the US has its share of special interests who lobby them to see the current issues in a light that is agreeable to the interest groups. When hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, are at stake the battleground is everyone everywhere. Each citizen is a marker that is placed in one column or another to represent the interests that are being influenced. Fear being a powerful agent is employed most effectively in these cases. Unfortunately our human susceptibility to fear makes us vulnerable to they who would use it as a weapon as opposerd to a defense. Fear cannot be used to promulgate a good and happy thing. Love and kindness can do that. The problem is that fear is trump in the cardgame of politics.