THE EAGLE FALLLS.
Prologue: The Last Breath.
Jeremy Voice lay feet from the private hospital (they were all private, these days, of course,), his heart beats slowing, his breathing shallow and painful, with the poisoned very air. His face towards the pavement, his broad nose pressed flat against it. Josh had always liked his big nose, not that Jeremy was ever going to see Josh or Angelica again, now. The people passing on the sidewalk paid him no mind. He felt his life blood emptying from his always weak heart, as his asthmatic lungs struggled to snatch oxygen from the poisonously polluted air. His nostrils contracted and expanded with more difficulty with each breath. His stomach groaned with hunger, but that's what happened when one hadn't eaten at all in a week and properly in...he couldn't remember how long. He was so parched, though, that at the moment he couldn't imagine eating anything. As he licked at the rain water on the ground before him, he felt a hard kick on his naked form, right next to where he was already bleeding.
“You, you filthy excuse for a person, why don't you at least put some clothes on, pond scum sucker.”
Jeremy glared at her. “If I had any money, or lived in a society that still cared at all about those of us who don't, and so could obtain some, I gladly would.”
“What are you doing here, anyway, boy?”
Jeremy tried to raise his voice to show his anger, but was too weak to do so. “What does it look like I'm doing? I'm dying.”
“An odd place for refuse like you to die. Why don't you die at home? Oh,don't tell me,” her tone became extremely sarcastic. “Poor little boy doesn't have a home. You were in public housing, but when The Crusade of Conservatism to restore America took Congress, we abolished public housing.”
“For your information, Ma'am,”said Jeremy. “I was in my own apartment with just some government assistance while I looked for a new job until this latest congress cut off all such assistance as well as food stamps, welfare, Medicaid and even private insurance.”
“And we were right to do so,” the woman declared. “Anyone who refuses to take care of their own doesn't deserve to live, and neither do their own.”
“So,” said Jeremy Voice, shocked. “You're even willing to sacrifice innocent children for your philosophy?”
For a moment, she looked like she was going to try to argue further, but then instead she kicked him again, hard, then walked off. He could hear people's murmurs of ascent to her words. Yes, that was when his life began to totally unravel. The day the totally Conservative Controlled Congress was seated in January 2011, it immediately undid not only The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but also Medicare, Medicaid, and even private insurance, anything that could see anyone but the extremely rich get any medical care at all.
“You look like you haven't eaten for days,” said a jeering voice above him. In the olden days, Jeremy would have given the owner of that voice a few less teeth to jeer with, but now he was too weak to do anything but bite the man's foot, which he did, bringing a kick and a tiraid of cursing. And then the man walking off. Yes, it had all started with the new Congress establishing on its first day that anyone needing assistance paying medical bills could not deserve medical attention, and similar action on asisstance with food, clothing and shelter had soon followed, leaving Jeremy and others like him literally out in the cold. And then the abolition of The E.P.A. That followed had caused the air to take such poor quality that his asthmatic lungs could go off at any moment, any time and any day and so he arranged going out carefully and only did on the best air quaklity days. T yes, he hadn't eaten or drunk clean water in days and his weak heart was close to ceasing to beat as his asthmatic lungs struggled to draw oxygen from the massovpolurtio in around them.
A few more people kicked his naked form, but no one else jeered, although no one offered to help either as his life emptied on to the ground before him.
As Jeremy Voice drew a deep breath in through his large nostrils, knowing it was his last and his life would expire once he let it out, Jeremy Voice wondered how it had come to this?
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Conservatives Say 'BUILD YOUR OWN HOSPITAL'
BUILD YOUR OWN HOSPITAL
Charlie awoke with a great pain in his chest. He dialed 911 and received the following message.
“The number you have reached is no longer in service. If this is a medical emergency, hopefully you have the skills to take care of it yourself. If not, phone a fiend who is capable of doing so and build your own road to his or her house...”
Charlie heard no more, for the shock of 911 no longer being there at this moment when he really needed it had caused him to drop dead on the spot.
Elsewhere, Susan called her child's pediatrician to arrange his prejunior high physical.
“I'm sorry Mrs. Notsrom,” said the receptionist. “But Dr. Bobs is no longer legally allowed to practice medicine. Not that it matters much for your request anyway, since public schooling has also been done away with.”
Susan Notsrom was so shocked that she couldn't speak.
In the northern part of the country, John Matts called his doctor about refilling his insulin medication.
“I'm sorry Mr. Matts,” his doctor's nurse told him. “But according to the new law you are only allowed to take what medications you are able to make yourself.”
“But I'm a mechanic,” John protested. “I'm not a doctor or a pharmacist. I don't have the faintest idea or first clue how to make my medicine.”
“Then I suggest you set your affairs in order,” said the Nurse, then hug up.
“Because I'm going to die soon,” John finished the unsaid end of the sentence.
Since he only had two more days' worth of medicine, he was dead before the end of the week.
“My friend was just severely beaten,” Joan shouted at the operator.
“Well, if you have the skills to heal her, do so,” said the operator. “Bu we can't send an ambulance because there are no more public roads and we can't even send a chopper because as of last night all even semi public services are completely gone, and there is no one here to treat her anyway since medical treatment by strangers of strangers has now been outlawed.” Then the oporator hung up.
Joan held Mark's hand tight and sobbed uncontrollably has his consciousness faded.
“My wife is going into labor!” Bert shouted into the phone. “Send an ambulance or a chopper, NOW.”
“Sir, calm down said the person on the other end of the phone. “I can't send an ambulance because as of last night there are no more public roads and so you'd have to build your own road, and even if I sent a chopper, this is no longer a public use hospital, there is no longer any such thing as an open to the public hospital. Any medical care of any kind that people need they must give themselves or mooch off of a friend. You must do all of the delivery yourself sir, good luck.” Then the operator hung up.
“Well,” said Bert, mostly to himself. “There are those classes we've been taking.”
But he hadn't planned on doing it all himself, without the hep of any medical professional. Obviously he must do it though, so he began to coach and do what he could of the rest of it. If it had been an easy birth, it might have been all right, but the baby was two weeks late, weighed twelve pounds and was a breach birth, which Bert was not even remotely prepared for. His wife died i labor, and the baby died shortly after being born the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. Bert was so distraught that moments later he took his own life.
Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., the new Republican majority of Congress were congratulating themselves. “We finally got rid of all public health programs and public roads. Now people are free to live their own lives, free of government interference. Let's tackle schools next.”
All nodded in agreement. “Yes,” one said. “It's time the government got out of education completely too. After all, apart from running the army to defend us and invade other countries, the federal government cannot do anything right and according to the Constitution has no power to even try, so getting it completely out of medicine and totally out of transportation was definitely a good idea.'
“Here, here,” said the others, raised their glasses and drank deeply at finally being able to undo all of the government interference in roads, transportation in general ad medical care for the poor and for senior citizens and then out of the classroom and soon out of everything but he army, and then went to their residences for a comfortable and well deserved full night's sleep.
Charlie awoke with a great pain in his chest. He dialed 911 and received the following message.
“The number you have reached is no longer in service. If this is a medical emergency, hopefully you have the skills to take care of it yourself. If not, phone a fiend who is capable of doing so and build your own road to his or her house...”
Charlie heard no more, for the shock of 911 no longer being there at this moment when he really needed it had caused him to drop dead on the spot.
Elsewhere, Susan called her child's pediatrician to arrange his prejunior high physical.
“I'm sorry Mrs. Notsrom,” said the receptionist. “But Dr. Bobs is no longer legally allowed to practice medicine. Not that it matters much for your request anyway, since public schooling has also been done away with.”
Susan Notsrom was so shocked that she couldn't speak.
In the northern part of the country, John Matts called his doctor about refilling his insulin medication.
“I'm sorry Mr. Matts,” his doctor's nurse told him. “But according to the new law you are only allowed to take what medications you are able to make yourself.”
“But I'm a mechanic,” John protested. “I'm not a doctor or a pharmacist. I don't have the faintest idea or first clue how to make my medicine.”
“Then I suggest you set your affairs in order,” said the Nurse, then hug up.
“Because I'm going to die soon,” John finished the unsaid end of the sentence.
Since he only had two more days' worth of medicine, he was dead before the end of the week.
“My friend was just severely beaten,” Joan shouted at the operator.
“Well, if you have the skills to heal her, do so,” said the operator. “Bu we can't send an ambulance because there are no more public roads and we can't even send a chopper because as of last night all even semi public services are completely gone, and there is no one here to treat her anyway since medical treatment by strangers of strangers has now been outlawed.” Then the oporator hung up.
Joan held Mark's hand tight and sobbed uncontrollably has his consciousness faded.
“My wife is going into labor!” Bert shouted into the phone. “Send an ambulance or a chopper, NOW.”
“Sir, calm down said the person on the other end of the phone. “I can't send an ambulance because as of last night there are no more public roads and so you'd have to build your own road, and even if I sent a chopper, this is no longer a public use hospital, there is no longer any such thing as an open to the public hospital. Any medical care of any kind that people need they must give themselves or mooch off of a friend. You must do all of the delivery yourself sir, good luck.” Then the operator hung up.
“Well,” said Bert, mostly to himself. “There are those classes we've been taking.”
But he hadn't planned on doing it all himself, without the hep of any medical professional. Obviously he must do it though, so he began to coach and do what he could of the rest of it. If it had been an easy birth, it might have been all right, but the baby was two weeks late, weighed twelve pounds and was a breach birth, which Bert was not even remotely prepared for. His wife died i labor, and the baby died shortly after being born the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. Bert was so distraught that moments later he took his own life.
Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., the new Republican majority of Congress were congratulating themselves. “We finally got rid of all public health programs and public roads. Now people are free to live their own lives, free of government interference. Let's tackle schools next.”
All nodded in agreement. “Yes,” one said. “It's time the government got out of education completely too. After all, apart from running the army to defend us and invade other countries, the federal government cannot do anything right and according to the Constitution has no power to even try, so getting it completely out of medicine and totally out of transportation was definitely a good idea.'
“Here, here,” said the others, raised their glasses and drank deeply at finally being able to undo all of the government interference in roads, transportation in general ad medical care for the poor and for senior citizens and then out of the classroom and soon out of everything but he army, and then went to their residences for a comfortable and well deserved full night's sleep.
THE NIGHT THAT FOLLOWED THE ELECTION
THE DARKEST DAY,
A PROPHETIC STORY FROM GOD, TOLD THROUGH MATTHEW LUCASBECKETT
Dawn, November Second, 2010.
“We're still poised to take back our country from the commies and the socialists,” said the minority leader of The House of Representatives, although he was sure by day's end he would change that title for Speaker of The House. His wife nodded enthusiastically as the drove to watch the returns from G.O.P. Headquarters, having cast their own ballots some time ago in early voting.
“Early returns show Republicans with a strong lead in both Chambers,” the anchor for the morning news reported “Voter anger over socialized medicine handout of control unnecessary government spending on the poor topping the list for reasons for voting as they did in our interviews.”
“Well, any spending on the poor is unnecessary,” said The G.O.P, Senate leader, to which all of his colleagues nodded. “If you can't make it completely on your own, you don't deserve to make it at all.”
“Here,here,” said several of his colleagues, raising their glasses.
All around the country it was a similar scene, Republicans doing very well and Republican viewing parties very happy.
“Well, we did the right thing by trying to ensure that every American could have decent, affordable health care,” said the current and now it looked like outgoing Speaker of The House. “But the right thing is not always the popular thing. I hope those who could not get insurance under the old system didn't get too used to the idea of having it under the new system.”
By day's end, while some races were still too close to call, it was clear that Republicans had obtained total control of both Chambers of Congress.
“Repealing Obama Care is obviously first,” said the new Speaker of The House. “And then we ca move on to dismantling Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.”
They all went to bed that night happy and plotting about all they would do to ensure that only he super rich had anything, only sorry that they could not start at dawn the very next day.
When they woke, however, it was just as dark outside as when they had gone to bed . The new speaker looked at his clock and his eyes widened. “It's 9:00,” he exclaimed. “Sunrise was hours ago, why. . .”
But then a horrible, mocking, pure evil voice spoke over the whole country and all heard it loud and clear, eve those who a moment before had been sound asleep.
“The sun shall never rise on this land again. The Light has left you. Yesterday, you chose me, so now I have you eternally.”
“The Light shines in the Darkness, and the Darkness cannot overcome It,” read an ultra Conservative Pastor.
The voice laughed again. “Overcome it, of course I cannot overcome it,but I don't need to overcome It. You rejected it yesterday by choosing my way of selfishness, greed and heartlessness, so now It has rejected you and given you over into my hands eternally.”
“Are you The Prince of Darkness?” asked someone else, a seminary student in fact.
Again came the horrible laugh. “How little you understand. The Prince of Darkness, Satan as you call Him, is merely one of my servants. You say “the light Shines in The Darkness, but you never realize that I am an entity myself. I am the true master of evil, I am The Darkness Itself. You are still alive, but you shall live forever within me. You cannot kill yourself, even to get into Hell, for this s the truly great punishment for rejecting the Calls of The Prophets and The King of The World for Justice for the downtrodden, to live eternally totally within me, in total darkness. There is no escape, no way out, and no end. You chose me what for you is yesterday, and now I have you eternally. There shall be no morning, EVER. You are within The Darkness Itself, within Me, forever.”
Then The Darkness Itself gave another mocking laugh,and the people of America fainted or wept or waled or prayed, but to no avail, for when after many warnings they had continually turned their back on The Ways of The Light, The Light had at last,regretfully, firmly and forever turned Its back on them.
Matthew Lucas Beckett, a Prophet, Appointed by GOD: Hear now the Words of The LORD: “If,America,on November Second, you turn your backs on The Least of My children by riving those who say that you should not do for the least of My children among you into power in any substantial sense, R stands for Rejecting My Command to do for the least of this among you, I will turn My back on you and forever withdraw My Light and My Mercy, so do not vote R on November Second. All who preach hate or leaving yr poor to starve in My name are False Prophets, and I shall deal with them as I dealt with The False Prophets of Old. So turn towards Compassion for your less fortunate on November Second Americans, and you shall have mine. Turn towards Light and Love for others, and you shall receive them from Me. Reject these for the least among you, and I shall reject you.” The Words of GOD, Amen.
A PROPHETIC STORY FROM GOD, TOLD THROUGH MATTHEW LUCASBECKETT
Dawn, November Second, 2010.
“We're still poised to take back our country from the commies and the socialists,” said the minority leader of The House of Representatives, although he was sure by day's end he would change that title for Speaker of The House. His wife nodded enthusiastically as the drove to watch the returns from G.O.P. Headquarters, having cast their own ballots some time ago in early voting.
“Early returns show Republicans with a strong lead in both Chambers,” the anchor for the morning news reported “Voter anger over socialized medicine handout of control unnecessary government spending on the poor topping the list for reasons for voting as they did in our interviews.”
“Well, any spending on the poor is unnecessary,” said The G.O.P, Senate leader, to which all of his colleagues nodded. “If you can't make it completely on your own, you don't deserve to make it at all.”
“Here,here,” said several of his colleagues, raising their glasses.
All around the country it was a similar scene, Republicans doing very well and Republican viewing parties very happy.
“Well, we did the right thing by trying to ensure that every American could have decent, affordable health care,” said the current and now it looked like outgoing Speaker of The House. “But the right thing is not always the popular thing. I hope those who could not get insurance under the old system didn't get too used to the idea of having it under the new system.”
By day's end, while some races were still too close to call, it was clear that Republicans had obtained total control of both Chambers of Congress.
“Repealing Obama Care is obviously first,” said the new Speaker of The House. “And then we ca move on to dismantling Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.”
They all went to bed that night happy and plotting about all they would do to ensure that only he super rich had anything, only sorry that they could not start at dawn the very next day.
When they woke, however, it was just as dark outside as when they had gone to bed . The new speaker looked at his clock and his eyes widened. “It's 9:00,” he exclaimed. “Sunrise was hours ago, why. . .”
But then a horrible, mocking, pure evil voice spoke over the whole country and all heard it loud and clear, eve those who a moment before had been sound asleep.
“The sun shall never rise on this land again. The Light has left you. Yesterday, you chose me, so now I have you eternally.”
“The Light shines in the Darkness, and the Darkness cannot overcome It,” read an ultra Conservative Pastor.
The voice laughed again. “Overcome it, of course I cannot overcome it,but I don't need to overcome It. You rejected it yesterday by choosing my way of selfishness, greed and heartlessness, so now It has rejected you and given you over into my hands eternally.”
“Are you The Prince of Darkness?” asked someone else, a seminary student in fact.
Again came the horrible laugh. “How little you understand. The Prince of Darkness, Satan as you call Him, is merely one of my servants. You say “the light Shines in The Darkness, but you never realize that I am an entity myself. I am the true master of evil, I am The Darkness Itself. You are still alive, but you shall live forever within me. You cannot kill yourself, even to get into Hell, for this s the truly great punishment for rejecting the Calls of The Prophets and The King of The World for Justice for the downtrodden, to live eternally totally within me, in total darkness. There is no escape, no way out, and no end. You chose me what for you is yesterday, and now I have you eternally. There shall be no morning, EVER. You are within The Darkness Itself, within Me, forever.”
Then The Darkness Itself gave another mocking laugh,and the people of America fainted or wept or waled or prayed, but to no avail, for when after many warnings they had continually turned their back on The Ways of The Light, The Light had at last,regretfully, firmly and forever turned Its back on them.
Matthew Lucas Beckett, a Prophet, Appointed by GOD: Hear now the Words of The LORD: “If,America,on November Second, you turn your backs on The Least of My children by riving those who say that you should not do for the least of My children among you into power in any substantial sense, R stands for Rejecting My Command to do for the least of this among you, I will turn My back on you and forever withdraw My Light and My Mercy, so do not vote R on November Second. All who preach hate or leaving yr poor to starve in My name are False Prophets, and I shall deal with them as I dealt with The False Prophets of Old. So turn towards Compassion for your less fortunate on November Second Americans, and you shall have mine. Turn towards Light and Love for others, and you shall receive them from Me. Reject these for the least among you, and I shall reject you.” The Words of GOD, Amen.
Conservatives True Colors
A LUMP FOR LIFE, WHO CARES?
The doctor entered the hospital room, looking grim. “I'm afraid there's nothing more I can do for you,” he told my brother, who sat on the edge of the hospital bed with his left leg severed below the knee.
“What do you mean?” said Travis. “There are prosthetic legs being made by many companies these days.”
“Yes,” said the doctor a hint of anger creeping into his voice. “But your insurance has refused to pay for such treatment, saying that it is still experimental, even though it is a procedure approved by the medical establishment as safe and effective and having passed the experimental stage. Without insurance approval, the hospital won't allow it, and yes, Tom,” he adds to me as I open my mouth. “I know you have the money to pay for it yourself,but the hospital won't approve tat.”
“So what can we do?” I ask.
“I'd write to your representatives in Congress and urge them to pass the bill that would make this kind of denial illegal,” says the doctor.
“Well, as with my donations to their campaigns, I'm on a first name basis with most of them, that should not be too difficult to persuade them of,” I say.
The next morning I have letters in the mail to our two Republican Senators and our Democratic Representative.
Within two weeks, I hear from our Representative.
“Dear Tom,” he writes. “I appreciate the letter and your situation. Many suffering as your brother is suffering have no advocate such as you, and for their and his sake I am working hard to see that this bill does pass.” He gives a website that I can link to in order to encourage this, and I'm on the site doing so by evening that day.
A week later I hear back from both Senators, with letters so close to alike that it's not worth repeating both.
“Dear Thomas,” the letter starts off, a bad sign, for apart from mother no one I'm close to has called me Thomas since I was a child. “I am sorry for Travis's situation, but if this bill becomes law, anyone who has such an injury could get treatment, and those without your deep pockets we don't want having the same opportunities as we do, do we? Even those who currently have no insurance could get prosthetic limbs when they lose limbs. And,clearly your brother is under-insured, which either means he's too lazy to have bothered with proper insurance or for some other reason is undeserving of full coverage. Wasn't he a bit careless as a child? Maybe that's how he lost this limb, in which case it certainly should not be replaced.”
I gasp and for several seconds cannot catch my breath. The total indifference to my brother's suffering and near rejoicing in the similar suffering of the less fortunate than us is incomprehensible to me, and for anyone to call Travis lazy makes me so mad I can't see straight. He's worked for thirty-seven years for improvement of the lives of the less fortunate, and never once taken a single sick day often even pursuing his work on Sunday afternoons and Holidays.
“Need takes no days off, little brother,” he often tells me. “So why should I?”
And now he's going to spend the rest of his life an invalid, because my senators don't want people like those he's sought to help his entire adult life to stand any chance at all of getting the same or comparable treatment for the same or comparable injuries.
As soon as I am master of my emotions and faculties once more, I call my accountant, cancel all contributions to both of my senators campaigns and put the money into their opponents' campaigns and increase my contribution to my Representatives campaign.
With Travis out for awhile, I take management of his work, since my own business pretty much runs itself these days anyway, and I learn that our situation is far from unique or the worst of it.
“At least you heard back from your Senators,” says a client missing his right arm from the elbow down. “When I lost my favored arm and my insurance wouldn't pay for any treatment, my wife wrote dozens of letters to both senators and our representative asking why this practice was allowed by law, and our senators showed their indifference by never even responding.”
I meet a boy who lost both hands and whose father did hear back from the senators but heard that in their neighborhood the boy must have lost them to gang activity and so deserved to have lost them, even though there were ten eyewitnesses plus two video cameras that clearly showed that the boy lost his hands when part of a poorly constructed wall fell on them.
And of course there was the fifteen year old girl who took her own life in our office after hearing from our senators that her parents' insurance company was correct, justified and righteous for denying her mental health services after a traumatic brain injury caused by a near drowning incident.
After that, I must admit, Travis and I both agreed that his problems seemed minor by comparison, but we're both still shocked by our senators total indifference to all of this.
Eventually, of course, Health Care Reform did pass, but my brother, now in a wheelchair for life, and I and all of our clients are shocked and dismayed at the continued total indifference to all of those suffering permanent effects of treatable injuries and diseases of the entire Republican Party exemplified by federal and state attempts to undo the progress towards “Life,Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness” for all that has been made by making decent, affordable health care a right for all rather than a privilege for the elite few.
The doctor entered the hospital room, looking grim. “I'm afraid there's nothing more I can do for you,” he told my brother, who sat on the edge of the hospital bed with his left leg severed below the knee.
“What do you mean?” said Travis. “There are prosthetic legs being made by many companies these days.”
“Yes,” said the doctor a hint of anger creeping into his voice. “But your insurance has refused to pay for such treatment, saying that it is still experimental, even though it is a procedure approved by the medical establishment as safe and effective and having passed the experimental stage. Without insurance approval, the hospital won't allow it, and yes, Tom,” he adds to me as I open my mouth. “I know you have the money to pay for it yourself,but the hospital won't approve tat.”
“So what can we do?” I ask.
“I'd write to your representatives in Congress and urge them to pass the bill that would make this kind of denial illegal,” says the doctor.
“Well, as with my donations to their campaigns, I'm on a first name basis with most of them, that should not be too difficult to persuade them of,” I say.
The next morning I have letters in the mail to our two Republican Senators and our Democratic Representative.
Within two weeks, I hear from our Representative.
“Dear Tom,” he writes. “I appreciate the letter and your situation. Many suffering as your brother is suffering have no advocate such as you, and for their and his sake I am working hard to see that this bill does pass.” He gives a website that I can link to in order to encourage this, and I'm on the site doing so by evening that day.
A week later I hear back from both Senators, with letters so close to alike that it's not worth repeating both.
“Dear Thomas,” the letter starts off, a bad sign, for apart from mother no one I'm close to has called me Thomas since I was a child. “I am sorry for Travis's situation, but if this bill becomes law, anyone who has such an injury could get treatment, and those without your deep pockets we don't want having the same opportunities as we do, do we? Even those who currently have no insurance could get prosthetic limbs when they lose limbs. And,clearly your brother is under-insured, which either means he's too lazy to have bothered with proper insurance or for some other reason is undeserving of full coverage. Wasn't he a bit careless as a child? Maybe that's how he lost this limb, in which case it certainly should not be replaced.”
I gasp and for several seconds cannot catch my breath. The total indifference to my brother's suffering and near rejoicing in the similar suffering of the less fortunate than us is incomprehensible to me, and for anyone to call Travis lazy makes me so mad I can't see straight. He's worked for thirty-seven years for improvement of the lives of the less fortunate, and never once taken a single sick day often even pursuing his work on Sunday afternoons and Holidays.
“Need takes no days off, little brother,” he often tells me. “So why should I?”
And now he's going to spend the rest of his life an invalid, because my senators don't want people like those he's sought to help his entire adult life to stand any chance at all of getting the same or comparable treatment for the same or comparable injuries.
As soon as I am master of my emotions and faculties once more, I call my accountant, cancel all contributions to both of my senators campaigns and put the money into their opponents' campaigns and increase my contribution to my Representatives campaign.
With Travis out for awhile, I take management of his work, since my own business pretty much runs itself these days anyway, and I learn that our situation is far from unique or the worst of it.
“At least you heard back from your Senators,” says a client missing his right arm from the elbow down. “When I lost my favored arm and my insurance wouldn't pay for any treatment, my wife wrote dozens of letters to both senators and our representative asking why this practice was allowed by law, and our senators showed their indifference by never even responding.”
I meet a boy who lost both hands and whose father did hear back from the senators but heard that in their neighborhood the boy must have lost them to gang activity and so deserved to have lost them, even though there were ten eyewitnesses plus two video cameras that clearly showed that the boy lost his hands when part of a poorly constructed wall fell on them.
And of course there was the fifteen year old girl who took her own life in our office after hearing from our senators that her parents' insurance company was correct, justified and righteous for denying her mental health services after a traumatic brain injury caused by a near drowning incident.
After that, I must admit, Travis and I both agreed that his problems seemed minor by comparison, but we're both still shocked by our senators total indifference to all of this.
Eventually, of course, Health Care Reform did pass, but my brother, now in a wheelchair for life, and I and all of our clients are shocked and dismayed at the continued total indifference to all of those suffering permanent effects of treatable injuries and diseases of the entire Republican Party exemplified by federal and state attempts to undo the progress towards “Life,Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness” for all that has been made by making decent, affordable health care a right for all rather than a privilege for the elite few.
ARISE!
ARISE, you who groan beneath theweight of Medical Bills you cannnot pay because you areunable to purchase Health Insurance for preexisting health condition or any other reason. ARISE, you who must pay exorbitant premiums to have coverage for these reasons. ARISE, you who have lost loved ones because your insurancewouldn't cover them at all or wouldn't cover a specifictreatment or wouldn't cover the full treatment. ARISE, you have been unnecessarily disabled or lost limbs because of asystem that put money before people. ARISE, all you who the old health care system in this contry failed in any way because it put making a profit on ahigher priority than making and keeping people alive and healthy. ARISE. Make our voicces heard from The Statue of Liberty on The Atlantic Coast to the Western Most tip of The Pacific Coast. From tehe Northern Most tip of Alaska to the Southern Most tip of The Gulf of Mexico. Tell allyour friends, relatives and colleagues who oppose Truly meaningful health care reform and instead want to just make it harder to sue doctors and call it a day why that alone IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH and all of the new Rights and Protections afforded by The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act MUST stand if we are to have our "Life, Liberty and The Persuit of Happiess." Tell all who want to undo or reduce Compassion Care that they WILL NOT deny our humanity any more! Tell them that we WILL NOT be treated like second class citizens! We WILL NOT be put back under the boot of businessmen who put profits before people and so will let us suffer or die rather than give us insurance because we have some already present health isue or even issues. We WILL BE treated with dignity and respect. WE WILLL NOT be returned to asystem in which we either have no Health Insurance at all or must pay twice the rate of Coomparable, PrivateCoverage. We WILLL NOT be returned to a system that said because we might cost something to cover at some point, we shouldn't have health insurance at all. We WILL NOT be returned to a system that said because we are not rich or completely able bodied, our lives areworthless and we should not have the right to decent, affordable medical care. WE WILL NOT be put back in the box in the back room where Cconservaties would prefer to keep us so that they do not have to see the inadequacy of their sole solution, making it harder to sue doctors. WE WILL NOT be side-lined, ignorec or trodden upon any more. WE WILL BE treaed like the Human Beings that we are, not like some weaker subset. We may not be in the majority, but if we all stand up and make ourselves heard, we will be paid attention. So, yes, my fellow private insurance rejectees and friends of rejectees, ARISE, ARISE and let us be heard and our nation take notte. WE WILL NOT be turned back into anumber and a statistic on businessman's calcutlator to be dropped if we effect the financial bottom line. We have tasted being counted as a Human Being, and WE SHALL continue to be counted as such and to be treated assuch by our medical syystem. YES, ARISE, ARISE and demand our that All of Rights to "Life, Liberty and THe Persuit of Happiness" be completely respected, which certainly includes deccent, affordable, health care. So, ARISE, and demand all talk of taking that away cease immediately. Yes, ARISE, ARISE and demand our rightful place as equals in The American and Human Family! ARISE!
Friday, October 22, 2010
Amber's brain; Conservatives Against Justice
AMBER'S BRAIN: CONSERVATIVES ATTEMPT TO THWART JUSTICE
Amber woke up with a massive head ache. She grabbed her head and screamed as it took a tremendous leap in intensity and pain. Her roommate and sometime lover Scot, rushed in.
“What's wrong, Amber?” he asked, his expression growing alarmed as he saw her posture.
“I don't know,Scott,” she said through the pain. “I've just got this massive headache, and it keeps getting worse. I think we'd better go to. ..”
Before she could say another word, Scott had his car keys out and was walking her towards the door. Then he paused.
“Or should I call an ambulance, they could get you straight to the emergency room?”
Amber started to shake her head, then clutched it as a wave of even greater pain washed over it, screamed even louder, then fell to the floor as Scott went to the phone and dialed 911, and then blacked out.
Amber woke up in a hospital bed, Scott by her side.
“I did call an ambulance,” he said. “And it's a good thing, because they said if I'd driven you we would have gotten here too late for them to help you.”
“What happened to me?” she asked.
“You had a minor stroke,” Scott replied.
“If that was minor,” she said with a gasp. “I don't ever want to feel a major one.”
Scott looked uncomfortable.
“What?” she asked.
After hesitating a moment, Scott replied. “The doctors say this kind of minor stroke is an early warning of a much more major stroke.”
:How major, Scott?” Amber demanded, impatient with the slowness of the feed of information.
“Oh amber,” said Scott, clearly c holding back tears. “They say if you have the major stroke you'll sped the rest of your life in a persistent, vegetative state with no hope of recovery.”
“You said 'if' I have that kind of stroke, so there's a chance that I might not.”
“If you have the new procedure just FDA approved two months ago, you will not. Otherwise you will, thy say.”
“My insurance will never pay for something that new.”
“They have to, after the recent change in the law, since this is your only chance at recovery, they have to.”
“Well then,” said Amber. “Let's gt things started.”
“I already have,” said Scott. “We just need to wait for all of the ts and is, if you know what I mean.”
She did, she always did. She went to sleep ten, sure that when she woke up there would be a plan in place for her full recovery.
Meanwhile, on Capital Hill, a closed door meeting of Congressional Republicans was taking place.
“We have public sentiment on our side,” said one. “After November, we can undo government run health care.”
“We may have a problem,” said the representative from Amber's district. “There's a fairly prominent figure in my district, a young woman named Amber Trothmoth who had a stroke three weeks ago and without a fairly new procedure would be a vegetable for life. Under the old system, her insurance would not have paid for this procedure, but now it has to. If she has this procedure and recovers, people may tart to feel this change is a positive, so we've got to head it off now. I suggest an injunction against her having this procedure.”
Her colleagues agreed, and so it was drawn up, approved, and issued.
“Well, amber, you'll be b being fixed two days from now, and then everything will be all right,” said Scott.
Amber nodded.
Then came a knock, a currier entered, handed Scott a very legal looking document, and left.
Puzzled, Scott tore open the envelope and quickly read it, his expression growing more soar with every line.
“What is it, what's wrong?” asked Amber.
“It's a Republican congressional injunction against you having this procedure.”
Amber gasped. “What? Why?”
“They say it sets a bad precedent,” said Scott. “Then everything will have to be covered. What the mean is that once people see the benefits of the new system, they'll look bad. Well, they're going to look bad all right, I guarantee that.”
That afternoon, Scott held a press conference on Amber's condition, potential treatment and why that was now uncertain, and then launched an old and new media blitz on the matter, and public opinion, particularly among the locals who knew Amber best, started to turn against those who had issued the injunction, but the injunction remained in effect.
The day after Amber was to have had the operation, Scott was with her in her hospital room when she stiffened.
“Hold my hand, Scott, tight,” she said in a strained voice. “It's time. It's coming.”
Scott longed more than anything to argue the point, but he knew it would be useless, so he took her hand and squeezed tightly as the pressure built inside Amber's skull, tears flooding from his eyes.
AMBER GAVE A SCREAM BEYOND ANGUISH AND AGONY COMBIED AS HER BRAIN EXPLODED WITHIN HER SKULL AND SCOTT HOWLED AS HE COULD DO NOTHING ABOUT IT.
Then, it was over. Amber was dead, and Scott wept and howled into the empty night, but no answer echoed back from the rest of the hospital beyond, for everyone had there own problems to worry about. Weeping unchecked and uncontrollably, Scott kissed Amber's hand one last time, moved his lips in a silent vow, and then left to tell the appropriate hospital personnel that that their services for the living were no longer required.
Amber woke up with a massive head ache. She grabbed her head and screamed as it took a tremendous leap in intensity and pain. Her roommate and sometime lover Scot, rushed in.
“What's wrong, Amber?” he asked, his expression growing alarmed as he saw her posture.
“I don't know,Scott,” she said through the pain. “I've just got this massive headache, and it keeps getting worse. I think we'd better go to. ..”
Before she could say another word, Scott had his car keys out and was walking her towards the door. Then he paused.
“Or should I call an ambulance, they could get you straight to the emergency room?”
Amber started to shake her head, then clutched it as a wave of even greater pain washed over it, screamed even louder, then fell to the floor as Scott went to the phone and dialed 911, and then blacked out.
Amber woke up in a hospital bed, Scott by her side.
“I did call an ambulance,” he said. “And it's a good thing, because they said if I'd driven you we would have gotten here too late for them to help you.”
“What happened to me?” she asked.
“You had a minor stroke,” Scott replied.
“If that was minor,” she said with a gasp. “I don't ever want to feel a major one.”
Scott looked uncomfortable.
“What?” she asked.
After hesitating a moment, Scott replied. “The doctors say this kind of minor stroke is an early warning of a much more major stroke.”
:How major, Scott?” Amber demanded, impatient with the slowness of the feed of information.
“Oh amber,” said Scott, clearly c holding back tears. “They say if you have the major stroke you'll sped the rest of your life in a persistent, vegetative state with no hope of recovery.”
“You said 'if' I have that kind of stroke, so there's a chance that I might not.”
“If you have the new procedure just FDA approved two months ago, you will not. Otherwise you will, thy say.”
“My insurance will never pay for something that new.”
“They have to, after the recent change in the law, since this is your only chance at recovery, they have to.”
“Well then,” said Amber. “Let's gt things started.”
“I already have,” said Scott. “We just need to wait for all of the ts and is, if you know what I mean.”
She did, she always did. She went to sleep ten, sure that when she woke up there would be a plan in place for her full recovery.
Meanwhile, on Capital Hill, a closed door meeting of Congressional Republicans was taking place.
“We have public sentiment on our side,” said one. “After November, we can undo government run health care.”
“We may have a problem,” said the representative from Amber's district. “There's a fairly prominent figure in my district, a young woman named Amber Trothmoth who had a stroke three weeks ago and without a fairly new procedure would be a vegetable for life. Under the old system, her insurance would not have paid for this procedure, but now it has to. If she has this procedure and recovers, people may tart to feel this change is a positive, so we've got to head it off now. I suggest an injunction against her having this procedure.”
Her colleagues agreed, and so it was drawn up, approved, and issued.
“Well, amber, you'll be b being fixed two days from now, and then everything will be all right,” said Scott.
Amber nodded.
Then came a knock, a currier entered, handed Scott a very legal looking document, and left.
Puzzled, Scott tore open the envelope and quickly read it, his expression growing more soar with every line.
“What is it, what's wrong?” asked Amber.
“It's a Republican congressional injunction against you having this procedure.”
Amber gasped. “What? Why?”
“They say it sets a bad precedent,” said Scott. “Then everything will have to be covered. What the mean is that once people see the benefits of the new system, they'll look bad. Well, they're going to look bad all right, I guarantee that.”
That afternoon, Scott held a press conference on Amber's condition, potential treatment and why that was now uncertain, and then launched an old and new media blitz on the matter, and public opinion, particularly among the locals who knew Amber best, started to turn against those who had issued the injunction, but the injunction remained in effect.
The day after Amber was to have had the operation, Scott was with her in her hospital room when she stiffened.
“Hold my hand, Scott, tight,” she said in a strained voice. “It's time. It's coming.”
Scott longed more than anything to argue the point, but he knew it would be useless, so he took her hand and squeezed tightly as the pressure built inside Amber's skull, tears flooding from his eyes.
AMBER GAVE A SCREAM BEYOND ANGUISH AND AGONY COMBIED AS HER BRAIN EXPLODED WITHIN HER SKULL AND SCOTT HOWLED AS HE COULD DO NOTHING ABOUT IT.
Then, it was over. Amber was dead, and Scott wept and howled into the empty night, but no answer echoed back from the rest of the hospital beyond, for everyone had there own problems to worry about. Weeping unchecked and uncontrollably, Scott kissed Amber's hand one last time, moved his lips in a silent vow, and then left to tell the appropriate hospital personnel that that their services for the living were no longer required.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
A Senator and aFather
‘A SENATOR AND A FATHER’ BY MATTHEW LUCAS BECKETT
“I challenge any member of Congress who opposes doing anything about the health care crisis and thinks the current system is fine, to go off their government run, public health insurance for six months and try navigating the swamp the rest of us have to navigate, leaving their government I. D. at home when they go for treatment so that they get no special treatment at hospitals, doctor’s offices or insurance places or anywhere else having to do with medical treatment in any way, and if they still think it’s fine after six months on it, then they can say nothing needs to be done. Any member of The House or Senate of this opinion who hears this challenge and doesn’t take it, with their whole family, is a chicken.”
Senator Don Evasson, ranking member of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, stared at the man on TV.
His wife pressed his arm. “Please, dear, you’re not seriously considering, I mean with Jake’s health problems...”
A glare from her husband silenced her. “Nobody calls me a chicken,” he said. “The system is fine as it is. And that ends the conversation.”
His wife gave a strangled gasp of despair but said nothing and backed out of the room.
The next day Senator Evasson canceled his enrollment in the congressional health plan and shredded any cards that could get him special access in the private sector, or else put the cards that related to more than just medical care in a separate wallet from the one he had designated to be his medical wallet for the next six months, and then for life, since this would prove that the current system was fine as it was.
His nine year old son Jake did have asthma, a two year old traumatic brain injury, and a condition that made his bones very brittle and so they got broken often.
“But none of that will prove a problem” he assured his still rather distraught wife. “Private insurance takes care of millions just fine all the time. And this will finally shut those bleeding heart liberals, government take over everything people, up.”
He put from his mind all of the government controls on free press, free speech and other such things that he had voted for to keep the country safe from the terrorists dismissing it all as, ‘bleeding heart liberal stuff.’
Two days later he walked into a private health insurance firm as a private citizen, having shaved off his mustache, died his hair and dressed down considerably so that no one would recognize him and give him any special treatment.
When his turn came, he walked up to the window. “I wish to purchase health insurance for myself and my family,” he said confidently.
“Well, obviously,” said the surly looking and sounding clerk behind the window. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Take a form, go fill it out, and wait to be called.”
Stunned at the impersonal and impoliteness of the clerk, Senator Evasson took a form from the stack and then searched the crowded room a bit before finding a seat and going to it to start filling out the form. Halfway down the first page of the twenty page application, though, he ran into a problem.
“What does it mean?” he asked, approaching the window once more, “All pre-existing conditions excluded? What does it mean, ‘preexisting conditions’?”
The clerk looked at him in a very suspicious and he felt unnecessarily condescending manner. “Where have you been for the past twenty years. Treatment for any medical conditions that you and anyone in your family already have upon purchasing this policy will not be covered under it.”
He nodded. His wife had warned him about this. His heart sinking, he returned to his seat, trying to remember all of Jake’s health problems and think how he could truthfully frame them in a way that would not cause the company to refuse to take his young son at all. But he would find a way. After all, the current system was fine, and he would prove it to those big government, bleeding heart liberals that were always complaining about something being unfair to the poor or some other group. “Let’s see,” he said to himself, and then began writing. Jake has asthma, diabetes, a weak heart, only one lung and fainting spells that a medical cause for has never been determined. As he wrote all of this down, his heart sank further, for he knew that without the prescribed medications that this would surely mean were not covered, Jake’s health would deteriorate rapidly, but he had to prove the system worked fine as it was.
When Senator Evasson at last finished filing out the form, he took it to the window and turned it in.
Within a few weeks they had a private policy, although as he had feared none of Jake’s treatments were covered. “We have quite a bit in savings, though,” he told his wife. “And my pay isn’t bad, and your pay is even better.” She was after all a NASA employee.
Meanwhile, having gotten out of his committee despite his vote against it, a Health Care Reform Bill that kept private insurance but made it illegal for them to exclude preexisting conditions and had the option to purchase coverage similar to what he and his family had once had if the private market would not cover someone was working its way through Congress.
“Those bleeding heart, big government liberals keep banging on about the current system being broken.” he told his wife and Jake one evening at dinner. “We’re living proof that it isn’t. We’re doing just fine on private. . .”
Suddenly Jake began wheezing and fell out of his chair.
The ambulance arrived quickly and he was taken to the hospital, where they were told that he was in a diabetic coma worsened by his weak heart.
“But it’s all perfectly treatable,” the doctor assured the boy’s panicked parents. “How will you be paying.”
“Out of pocket,” Senator Evasson said, pulling out his wallet.
The doctor and his wife stared. “But you have insurance,” the doctor finally said. “I know you do.”
“Yes,” said Senator Evasson. “But both of these are ‘preexisting conditions’ that are exempt from coverage.”
His wife glared at him. “I warned you. . .”
“Shush,” he said with such force both she and the doctor took a step back. “Things are coming to a head, and I can’t show weakness now.”
It was true, The Health Care Overall Bill was nearing a final vote in the Senate, and the numbers were looking much too close for his liking.
So for the next few weeks he came home from Washington D.C. every chance he got, and each time Jake’s condition had worsened. His son had still never regained consciousness, but his wife and he spent all they had to keep him on life support, and in D.C. The Reform Bill came closer and closer to a final vote.
Finally, the money ran out, and as expected when they applied for help from their insurance company, it turned them down because these were both preexisting conditions, the person on the other end of the line completely indifferent to the fact that a nine year old boy was dying.
“Senator Evasson,” The Vice President said. “The vote is fifty-nine to forty in favor of ending the filibuster and passing the reform bill, which the President is ready to sign tomorrow, what is your vote?”
Senator Evasson, drawn out of his brooding, sat mute and stunned. If Jake didn’t start receiving treatment again soon, his son would die. The private insurance would not pay for that treatment, and he and his wife had no more money to do so out of pocket, they were barely keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table now, not that any of that would matter if Jake died and she divorced him, as she had made clear she would if he let their son die, as she put it. But this was a matter of principal. The private market was always better than a government run system, and he still could not quite bring himself to break that principle. “But if I don’t, Jake will die..” he said quietly to himself.
“What?” said The Vice-President. “Speak up, Senator Evasson. Your vote?”
“Mr. Vice President,” said Senator Evasson, still struggling to decide what to do. “I cast my vote. . .”
And here this story ends. What happens to Jake Evasson depends on what happens in Washington D.C. in the coming weeks, and he doesn’t have much time. What happens to millions of others also hangs in the balance, and how this debate plays out in Congress will determine all of their fates, but the choice is really the people’s, and whether will make our voices heard as the big private insurance companies direct us or in support of our fellow human beings on this path, and that is all that I have to say here.
Commentary by Matthew Beckett, author of this story and Prophet appointed by GOD to be 'a voice in the wilderness' for true justice in this Country.
Jake Evasson may be a fictional character, but millions of other children and adults whose fate currently hangs in the balance of the debate raging in D.C. over fixing our nation’s Health Care System are not. The private market alone has failed people and will fail more if something isn’t done. It is time for this country to decide if we are The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA or just a bunch of individuals who live in part of the Americas who are each out for ourselves. And more than just the current matter hangs in the balance. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not because they allowed homosexuality but because they had no hospitality, no sense of taking care of strangers and the less fortunate. In the only detailed Gospel Account of the last judgment, the nations of the world are judged not on whether they allowed homosexuals to exist or or even on what they believed, but on what they did for “the least of those among you”. Which side will this country be on when that day comes. Health care alone of course is not the only factor, but if we will not even make sure that everyone has decent and affordable Medical Care that will treat them even for long term Health Problems, what does that say about us as a country, and where else will we fail the final test of morality? It is time to decide who we are, and either way to make our voices heard from sea to shining sea, so that when the final, deciding vote is cast on taking care of those who under the current system either for economics, for preexisting conditions or for some other reason cannot take care of themselves, there will be no doubt of the people’s will, and whether we are a caring, compassionate, giving people who care about others, or a bunch of selfish, spoiled children who are each just out for themselves and do not care about those whose circumstances make it impossible under the current system to take care of themselves. The opposite of love is not hate, but selfishness and indifference, and which kind of people are we? The choice is before us, and I hope we choose love, but I’m only one, the people as a whole must decide, and decide now, who we are, and what we stand for and what we want to be, a compassionate and caring community, or a band of selfish, spoiled, self-satisfying individuals who are each only concerned for ourselves, and then act on and live with that decision, and then all the world will know who we truly are, as will the forces beyond this world, and may we side with GOD against oppression and hatred and selfishness, but more than one must do this for it to happen, and the choice is now yours, people of the land between Canada and Mexico, The United States of America, or the individuals of America, and the time for choosing is now, and may we all choose wisely the road that now stretches before us far into the future, out of eyesight, and then forever. And I end here. Amen.
“I challenge any member of Congress who opposes doing anything about the health care crisis and thinks the current system is fine, to go off their government run, public health insurance for six months and try navigating the swamp the rest of us have to navigate, leaving their government I. D. at home when they go for treatment so that they get no special treatment at hospitals, doctor’s offices or insurance places or anywhere else having to do with medical treatment in any way, and if they still think it’s fine after six months on it, then they can say nothing needs to be done. Any member of The House or Senate of this opinion who hears this challenge and doesn’t take it, with their whole family, is a chicken.”
Senator Don Evasson, ranking member of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, stared at the man on TV.
His wife pressed his arm. “Please, dear, you’re not seriously considering, I mean with Jake’s health problems...”
A glare from her husband silenced her. “Nobody calls me a chicken,” he said. “The system is fine as it is. And that ends the conversation.”
His wife gave a strangled gasp of despair but said nothing and backed out of the room.
The next day Senator Evasson canceled his enrollment in the congressional health plan and shredded any cards that could get him special access in the private sector, or else put the cards that related to more than just medical care in a separate wallet from the one he had designated to be his medical wallet for the next six months, and then for life, since this would prove that the current system was fine as it was.
His nine year old son Jake did have asthma, a two year old traumatic brain injury, and a condition that made his bones very brittle and so they got broken often.
“But none of that will prove a problem” he assured his still rather distraught wife. “Private insurance takes care of millions just fine all the time. And this will finally shut those bleeding heart liberals, government take over everything people, up.”
He put from his mind all of the government controls on free press, free speech and other such things that he had voted for to keep the country safe from the terrorists dismissing it all as, ‘bleeding heart liberal stuff.’
Two days later he walked into a private health insurance firm as a private citizen, having shaved off his mustache, died his hair and dressed down considerably so that no one would recognize him and give him any special treatment.
When his turn came, he walked up to the window. “I wish to purchase health insurance for myself and my family,” he said confidently.
“Well, obviously,” said the surly looking and sounding clerk behind the window. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Take a form, go fill it out, and wait to be called.”
Stunned at the impersonal and impoliteness of the clerk, Senator Evasson took a form from the stack and then searched the crowded room a bit before finding a seat and going to it to start filling out the form. Halfway down the first page of the twenty page application, though, he ran into a problem.
“What does it mean?” he asked, approaching the window once more, “All pre-existing conditions excluded? What does it mean, ‘preexisting conditions’?”
The clerk looked at him in a very suspicious and he felt unnecessarily condescending manner. “Where have you been for the past twenty years. Treatment for any medical conditions that you and anyone in your family already have upon purchasing this policy will not be covered under it.”
He nodded. His wife had warned him about this. His heart sinking, he returned to his seat, trying to remember all of Jake’s health problems and think how he could truthfully frame them in a way that would not cause the company to refuse to take his young son at all. But he would find a way. After all, the current system was fine, and he would prove it to those big government, bleeding heart liberals that were always complaining about something being unfair to the poor or some other group. “Let’s see,” he said to himself, and then began writing. Jake has asthma, diabetes, a weak heart, only one lung and fainting spells that a medical cause for has never been determined. As he wrote all of this down, his heart sank further, for he knew that without the prescribed medications that this would surely mean were not covered, Jake’s health would deteriorate rapidly, but he had to prove the system worked fine as it was.
When Senator Evasson at last finished filing out the form, he took it to the window and turned it in.
Within a few weeks they had a private policy, although as he had feared none of Jake’s treatments were covered. “We have quite a bit in savings, though,” he told his wife. “And my pay isn’t bad, and your pay is even better.” She was after all a NASA employee.
Meanwhile, having gotten out of his committee despite his vote against it, a Health Care Reform Bill that kept private insurance but made it illegal for them to exclude preexisting conditions and had the option to purchase coverage similar to what he and his family had once had if the private market would not cover someone was working its way through Congress.
“Those bleeding heart, big government liberals keep banging on about the current system being broken.” he told his wife and Jake one evening at dinner. “We’re living proof that it isn’t. We’re doing just fine on private. . .”
Suddenly Jake began wheezing and fell out of his chair.
The ambulance arrived quickly and he was taken to the hospital, where they were told that he was in a diabetic coma worsened by his weak heart.
“But it’s all perfectly treatable,” the doctor assured the boy’s panicked parents. “How will you be paying.”
“Out of pocket,” Senator Evasson said, pulling out his wallet.
The doctor and his wife stared. “But you have insurance,” the doctor finally said. “I know you do.”
“Yes,” said Senator Evasson. “But both of these are ‘preexisting conditions’ that are exempt from coverage.”
His wife glared at him. “I warned you. . .”
“Shush,” he said with such force both she and the doctor took a step back. “Things are coming to a head, and I can’t show weakness now.”
It was true, The Health Care Overall Bill was nearing a final vote in the Senate, and the numbers were looking much too close for his liking.
So for the next few weeks he came home from Washington D.C. every chance he got, and each time Jake’s condition had worsened. His son had still never regained consciousness, but his wife and he spent all they had to keep him on life support, and in D.C. The Reform Bill came closer and closer to a final vote.
Finally, the money ran out, and as expected when they applied for help from their insurance company, it turned them down because these were both preexisting conditions, the person on the other end of the line completely indifferent to the fact that a nine year old boy was dying.
“Senator Evasson,” The Vice President said. “The vote is fifty-nine to forty in favor of ending the filibuster and passing the reform bill, which the President is ready to sign tomorrow, what is your vote?”
Senator Evasson, drawn out of his brooding, sat mute and stunned. If Jake didn’t start receiving treatment again soon, his son would die. The private insurance would not pay for that treatment, and he and his wife had no more money to do so out of pocket, they were barely keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table now, not that any of that would matter if Jake died and she divorced him, as she had made clear she would if he let their son die, as she put it. But this was a matter of principal. The private market was always better than a government run system, and he still could not quite bring himself to break that principle. “But if I don’t, Jake will die..” he said quietly to himself.
“What?” said The Vice-President. “Speak up, Senator Evasson. Your vote?”
“Mr. Vice President,” said Senator Evasson, still struggling to decide what to do. “I cast my vote. . .”
And here this story ends. What happens to Jake Evasson depends on what happens in Washington D.C. in the coming weeks, and he doesn’t have much time. What happens to millions of others also hangs in the balance, and how this debate plays out in Congress will determine all of their fates, but the choice is really the people’s, and whether will make our voices heard as the big private insurance companies direct us or in support of our fellow human beings on this path, and that is all that I have to say here.
Commentary by Matthew Beckett, author of this story and Prophet appointed by GOD to be 'a voice in the wilderness' for true justice in this Country.
Jake Evasson may be a fictional character, but millions of other children and adults whose fate currently hangs in the balance of the debate raging in D.C. over fixing our nation’s Health Care System are not. The private market alone has failed people and will fail more if something isn’t done. It is time for this country to decide if we are The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA or just a bunch of individuals who live in part of the Americas who are each out for ourselves. And more than just the current matter hangs in the balance. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not because they allowed homosexuality but because they had no hospitality, no sense of taking care of strangers and the less fortunate. In the only detailed Gospel Account of the last judgment, the nations of the world are judged not on whether they allowed homosexuals to exist or or even on what they believed, but on what they did for “the least of those among you”. Which side will this country be on when that day comes. Health care alone of course is not the only factor, but if we will not even make sure that everyone has decent and affordable Medical Care that will treat them even for long term Health Problems, what does that say about us as a country, and where else will we fail the final test of morality? It is time to decide who we are, and either way to make our voices heard from sea to shining sea, so that when the final, deciding vote is cast on taking care of those who under the current system either for economics, for preexisting conditions or for some other reason cannot take care of themselves, there will be no doubt of the people’s will, and whether we are a caring, compassionate, giving people who care about others, or a bunch of selfish, spoiled children who are each just out for themselves and do not care about those whose circumstances make it impossible under the current system to take care of themselves. The opposite of love is not hate, but selfishness and indifference, and which kind of people are we? The choice is before us, and I hope we choose love, but I’m only one, the people as a whole must decide, and decide now, who we are, and what we stand for and what we want to be, a compassionate and caring community, or a band of selfish, spoiled, self-satisfying individuals who are each only concerned for ourselves, and then act on and live with that decision, and then all the world will know who we truly are, as will the forces beyond this world, and may we side with GOD against oppression and hatred and selfishness, but more than one must do this for it to happen, and the choice is now yours, people of the land between Canada and Mexico, The United States of America, or the individuals of America, and the time for choosing is now, and may we all choose wisely the road that now stretches before us far into the future, out of eyesight, and then forever. And I end here. Amen.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Where will TheU.S. spendEternity?
ON THE DAY AFTER THE ELECTION: A PROPHECY DICTATED BY GOD TO THE PROPHET MATTHEW LUCAS BECKETT APPOINTED BY GOD.
On November Second, 2010, Republicans gained total control of The House of Representatives and while they did not gain control of the Senate, they did gain enough seats to fillibuster any bill. They all met in a conference c call at midnight.
“The first thing we do,” said John Boener, the projected new Speaker of The House of Representatives. “Is repeal Obama Care and replace it with something that makes it impossible to sue doctors, even when a patient dies to bad medical treatment, and that's the only reform that was ever really needed.”
“Yes,” said John Cornyn, a senator from Texas. “But then undo any restrictions on drilling and all other unnecessary environmental regulations, which of course means all environmental regulations period. And Medicaid,Food Stamps and Welfare as a whole cost too much as well, and anyway, if you can't take care of yourself you don't deserve to live, so don't ask the government to help you. Defense, that's what the government should do.”
All present raised a glass to this and someone else mentioned abolishing The Department of Education s well, which all also drank to.
After a bit more celebrating they all went to bed, anxious for January to come so that they could begin to implement this agenda. But this was not to be.
At dawn on November Third, 2010, there was a great clamor and commotion from the sky. At first people thought that it was the biggest thunder storm they'd ever heard. But then they realized that it was the sound of trumpets, but not trumpets like any on Earth had ever heard, it was the sound of The Angels' Heavenly Trumpets, and then Jesus Christ, The Son of GOD and The Son of Man, seated upon a golden and glowing throne came down from Heaven and gathered all of people of the earth before Him, and then began to separate the people, one from another, as a Shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. Most nations fell all in one group or another, but with the people of The United States of America, those that had voted for the agenda the victorious Congressional Republicans had discussed on the previous night, an agenda totally devoid of any TRUE compassion, were placed among the goats, while those that had voted against this agenda and thus for TRUE compassion, were placed among the sheep. Then the KING turned to those on his right and said:
“Come, you who are blessed by My FATHER, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you since the dawn of time. For I was hungry and you fed Me. I was thirsty and you gave Me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed Me. I was naked and you clothed Me. I was sick you cared for Me. I was imprisoned and you visited Me.'
and the righteous answered “LORD, when did we see Thee hungry and feed Thee? Thirsty and give Thee drink? A stranger and welcome Thee? Naked and clothe Thee? Sick and care for Thee? Imprisoned and visit Thee?'
And The KING answered them; “Truly I tell you, whensoever your societies chose to do for the least of these My brothers and sisters among you, so also your societies have chosen to do to me.” To the Righteous Americans He added, “Though your larger society chose to reject these on what for you is yesterday, since you did not you are admitted to The Kingdom.' Then to all The Righteous He said 'Come, and enter The Kingdom.'
Then to those on His left The Son of GOD and Man said,”Depart from me, you wicked servants. For I was hungry and you gave Me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you turned me away. I was naked and you did not clothe me. I was sick and you did not care for Me. I was in prison and you did not visit me.”
And The Wicked answered, “LORD, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or imprisoned and did not take care of thee?”
And The KING answered them: “Truly I tell you, whensoever you have not done for the least of these my brothers and sisters among you, so also you have not done for me.” To the Americans He added: “When you rejected the right of all of your citizens to obtain food and drink and shelter and clothing and to see a doctor when needed and to close your borders to all and keep people imprisoned indefinitely with no recourse for release as you did by how you voted and plotted yesterday, you rejected caring for the least among you,” then once more to all The Wicked He said”Depart from Me, and go to The Eternal Fire prepared for The Devil and His Angels.”
But as they began to descend, many of The Wicked Americans called out: “LORD, in Your Name we erected monuments all over and stoned Homosexuals and. . .”
But The KING cut off their protests: “What in Judge Not lest ye Be Judged, for in the same manner ye judge others ye will be judged and with the same measure ye use on others it will be measured to ye' did you not understand. Did you think that when I said regarding the woman about to be stoned “Let he among ye that be without sin cast the first stone” that you could have done so? And did I not say that those who Pray in public to be seen by men would get no more reward than they already had. The call of those who followed me in mortal life was to care for those in need, and those that did shall have eternal life, but as you did not, you shall have eternal death.”
Then the flames of Hell rose up and consumed all of The Wicked and dragged them down into eternal darkness and torment at the hands of The Devil and his angels and each other, and the false prophets who had claimed Jesus's Name but rejected His teachings got the worst torment of all.
But those who had followed His teachings entered Eternal Bliss and glory and Life Forever in His presence.
MATTTHEW LUCAS BECKETT, A PROPHET CHOSEN BY GOD TO REMIND PEOPLE OF HISTRUE TEACHINGS.
The Voice of The LORD came to me and said “TELL YOUR PEOPLE THE ABOVE STORY. For if they reject caring for the less fortunate by their votes on November Second, this shall be their fate on November Third and for eternity. If Republicans, they who claim My Name but reject My Commands, win control of even just one Chamber of Congress on November Second, this shall happen on November Third. Glenn Beck, I name thee a false prophet, for preaching a Gospel against Economic and Social Justice. All who preach hate in MY NAME, of Homosexuals or otherwise, are also false Prophets. Head the warning of this story and reject those who reject Justice on November Second, or on November Third I shall reject you eternally. This is The Word of The LORD.” And that is all of The Voice of The LORD that came to me this night, and may we all heed His words, for clearly failure to do so shall be most costly, so let us as a country not fail in our duty to GOD and to our fellow Americans, particularly “The least of those among” us. AMEN.
On November Second, 2010, Republicans gained total control of The House of Representatives and while they did not gain control of the Senate, they did gain enough seats to fillibuster any bill. They all met in a conference c call at midnight.
“The first thing we do,” said John Boener, the projected new Speaker of The House of Representatives. “Is repeal Obama Care and replace it with something that makes it impossible to sue doctors, even when a patient dies to bad medical treatment, and that's the only reform that was ever really needed.”
“Yes,” said John Cornyn, a senator from Texas. “But then undo any restrictions on drilling and all other unnecessary environmental regulations, which of course means all environmental regulations period. And Medicaid,Food Stamps and Welfare as a whole cost too much as well, and anyway, if you can't take care of yourself you don't deserve to live, so don't ask the government to help you. Defense, that's what the government should do.”
All present raised a glass to this and someone else mentioned abolishing The Department of Education s well, which all also drank to.
After a bit more celebrating they all went to bed, anxious for January to come so that they could begin to implement this agenda. But this was not to be.
At dawn on November Third, 2010, there was a great clamor and commotion from the sky. At first people thought that it was the biggest thunder storm they'd ever heard. But then they realized that it was the sound of trumpets, but not trumpets like any on Earth had ever heard, it was the sound of The Angels' Heavenly Trumpets, and then Jesus Christ, The Son of GOD and The Son of Man, seated upon a golden and glowing throne came down from Heaven and gathered all of people of the earth before Him, and then began to separate the people, one from another, as a Shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. Most nations fell all in one group or another, but with the people of The United States of America, those that had voted for the agenda the victorious Congressional Republicans had discussed on the previous night, an agenda totally devoid of any TRUE compassion, were placed among the goats, while those that had voted against this agenda and thus for TRUE compassion, were placed among the sheep. Then the KING turned to those on his right and said:
“Come, you who are blessed by My FATHER, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you since the dawn of time. For I was hungry and you fed Me. I was thirsty and you gave Me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed Me. I was naked and you clothed Me. I was sick you cared for Me. I was imprisoned and you visited Me.'
and the righteous answered “LORD, when did we see Thee hungry and feed Thee? Thirsty and give Thee drink? A stranger and welcome Thee? Naked and clothe Thee? Sick and care for Thee? Imprisoned and visit Thee?'
And The KING answered them; “Truly I tell you, whensoever your societies chose to do for the least of these My brothers and sisters among you, so also your societies have chosen to do to me.” To the Righteous Americans He added, “Though your larger society chose to reject these on what for you is yesterday, since you did not you are admitted to The Kingdom.' Then to all The Righteous He said 'Come, and enter The Kingdom.'
Then to those on His left The Son of GOD and Man said,”Depart from me, you wicked servants. For I was hungry and you gave Me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you turned me away. I was naked and you did not clothe me. I was sick and you did not care for Me. I was in prison and you did not visit me.”
And The Wicked answered, “LORD, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or imprisoned and did not take care of thee?”
And The KING answered them: “Truly I tell you, whensoever you have not done for the least of these my brothers and sisters among you, so also you have not done for me.” To the Americans He added: “When you rejected the right of all of your citizens to obtain food and drink and shelter and clothing and to see a doctor when needed and to close your borders to all and keep people imprisoned indefinitely with no recourse for release as you did by how you voted and plotted yesterday, you rejected caring for the least among you,” then once more to all The Wicked He said”Depart from Me, and go to The Eternal Fire prepared for The Devil and His Angels.”
But as they began to descend, many of The Wicked Americans called out: “LORD, in Your Name we erected monuments all over and stoned Homosexuals and. . .”
But The KING cut off their protests: “What in Judge Not lest ye Be Judged, for in the same manner ye judge others ye will be judged and with the same measure ye use on others it will be measured to ye' did you not understand. Did you think that when I said regarding the woman about to be stoned “Let he among ye that be without sin cast the first stone” that you could have done so? And did I not say that those who Pray in public to be seen by men would get no more reward than they already had. The call of those who followed me in mortal life was to care for those in need, and those that did shall have eternal life, but as you did not, you shall have eternal death.”
Then the flames of Hell rose up and consumed all of The Wicked and dragged them down into eternal darkness and torment at the hands of The Devil and his angels and each other, and the false prophets who had claimed Jesus's Name but rejected His teachings got the worst torment of all.
But those who had followed His teachings entered Eternal Bliss and glory and Life Forever in His presence.
MATTTHEW LUCAS BECKETT, A PROPHET CHOSEN BY GOD TO REMIND PEOPLE OF HISTRUE TEACHINGS.
The Voice of The LORD came to me and said “TELL YOUR PEOPLE THE ABOVE STORY. For if they reject caring for the less fortunate by their votes on November Second, this shall be their fate on November Third and for eternity. If Republicans, they who claim My Name but reject My Commands, win control of even just one Chamber of Congress on November Second, this shall happen on November Third. Glenn Beck, I name thee a false prophet, for preaching a Gospel against Economic and Social Justice. All who preach hate in MY NAME, of Homosexuals or otherwise, are also false Prophets. Head the warning of this story and reject those who reject Justice on November Second, or on November Third I shall reject you eternally. This is The Word of The LORD.” And that is all of The Voice of The LORD that came to me this night, and may we all heed His words, for clearly failure to do so shall be most costly, so let us as a country not fail in our duty to GOD and to our fellow Americans, particularly “The least of those among” us. AMEN.
'THE FISH TANK' FOR AWHALE.
The Republican leadership of both The House and The Senate met in an emergency joint executive session the night before a final vote on Health Care Reform was scheduled.
“We don't have the votes in The House to stop it,” The Minority leader of The House declared. “But unless we do something to stop this major cut into industry profits our doors will be less generous this fall, although the mood of the country may still be in our favor if this happens.”
“Amid those for whom the current system works yes,” said the minority leader of The Senate. “But we'd make a mistake to forget there are those for whom the current system does not work and they are part of how the current administration came to power.”
“So are you saying we should not stop Health Care Reform from becoming law?” demanded one of his colleagues.
“Of course not,” said the Senator. “It's a horrible idea to give everyone health care. Those who can not take care of themselves deserve to die. But we can't be seen to be holding that view, because people like compassion, misguided as the very idea of caring for those who cannot take care of themselves is. So we've got to seem to care about those for whom the current system does not work even as we defeat this horrible proposal to ensure that we do defeat this horrible proposal.”
A Senator from Texas stood. “In my state we have system by which those turned down by other insurance companies can still purchase it through a private company, but the law says their rates have to be twice as much as comparable other coverage and members have to prove every year that they still can't get other coverage. We call it The Fish Tank.”
“Sounds good,” said the minority leader of the House. “Let's draw up a bill tonight and we can introduce it tomorrow and at least delay that final vote on the other bill tomorrow. We should make it four times the amount of comparable other coverage, and add a few other obstacles so people will feel... 'encouraged' to seek their own coverage.”
They stayed up all night drafting a national 'Fish Tank' Insurance Bill to introduce in opposition to The Main Health Care Reform Bill, and the next day introduced it just before the final vote on the original Bill. It had the desired effect. The vote on the other bill was delayed to give members time to consider, and in the meantime Conservatives Barnstormed the country, pushing this alternative. Many constituents of both parties who had turned against the original bill began to favor this alternative, and let their representatives and senators know so, and when at last both bills came to a final vote, the old reform bill failed, although not by much, and the Fish Tank Bill passed by a wide margin, for even those who had still favored the original bill wanted to be seen as doing something for their constituents for whom the old system had not worked while of course most wanted to appease the majority of their constituents who opposed the earlier bill but favored the new bill.
So The Health Care Fish Tank became The Law of The Land. “It said that at least one insurer in every state must provide insurance to those considered high risk coverage, but that these clients must be charged four times the amount of comparable coverage, must prove their ineligibility for other coverage every six months, could not have a physical more than once every three years, could only have the bare minimum even then and if they were found to have a life threatening condition must be dropped at once.”
“So you're giving the smallest possible solution to a huge problem,” said the Speaker of The House to the minority leader after the final votes. “You're essentially trying to fit a whale into your 'Health Care Fish Tank.'”
“We got something done,” he replied simply.
Got something done they had. Got something useful done they had not as far as Thomas Hanklin was concerned when two years after joining this plan because he had had a traumatic brain injury ten years earlier he contracted cancer which with aggressive treatment might have been cured but which once he got 'The Fish Tank' dropped him and he died within two weeks.
Nor did Georgia Blunkinshap consider it useful when her husband died after being dropped because of being H.I.V. Positive and with the amount they'd paid for him in premiums since due to an old back injury he had been ineligible for anything else she did not even have enough money left to give him a proper burial.
And the parents of young Brian Nodart who was born with a bad heart considered it useless since with only one check up every three years and only the bare minimum even then their son's failing heart went unnoticed until he dropped dead at age eleven, could not be revived and they could not even afford a head stone at his grave.
On the other hand,the share holders at the insurance companies these Republicans had insured remained loyal donors were very happy.
“And they're the only ones that really count,” said the minority leader of the House the night before the election he was sure would make him Speaker. “Those who can and do take care of themselves rather than whining about big business not giving them health care when if they had an accident as a child it's their own fault that 'The Fish Tank' is all that they can get and they don't deserve any better or more.” He raised his glass. “To money above all and its love above all other loves.”
All of his Colleagues raised their glasses and drank heartily to that, anticipating a sweep of Congress the next day.
The Republican leadership of both The House and The Senate met in an emergency joint executive session the night before a final vote on Health Care Reform was scheduled.
“We don't have the votes in The House to stop it,” The Minority leader of The House declared. “But unless we do something to stop this major cut into industry profits our doors will be less generous this fall, although the mood of the country may still be in our favor if this happens.”
“Amid those for whom the current system works yes,” said the minority leader of The Senate. “But we'd make a mistake to forget there are those for whom the current system does not work and they are part of how the current administration came to power.”
“So are you saying we should not stop Health Care Reform from becoming law?” demanded one of his colleagues.
“Of course not,” said the Senator. “It's a horrible idea to give everyone health care. Those who can not take care of themselves deserve to die. But we can't be seen to be holding that view, because people like compassion, misguided as the very idea of caring for those who cannot take care of themselves is. So we've got to seem to care about those for whom the current system does not work even as we defeat this horrible proposal to ensure that we do defeat this horrible proposal.”
A Senator from Texas stood. “In my state we have system by which those turned down by other insurance companies can still purchase it through a private company, but the law says their rates have to be twice as much as comparable other coverage and members have to prove every year that they still can't get other coverage. We call it The Fish Tank.”
“Sounds good,” said the minority leader of the House. “Let's draw up a bill tonight and we can introduce it tomorrow and at least delay that final vote on the other bill tomorrow. We should make it four times the amount of comparable other coverage, and add a few other obstacles so people will feel... 'encouraged' to seek their own coverage.”
They stayed up all night drafting a national 'Fish Tank' Insurance Bill to introduce in opposition to The Main Health Care Reform Bill, and the next day introduced it just before the final vote on the original Bill. It had the desired effect. The vote on the other bill was delayed to give members time to consider, and in the meantime Conservatives Barnstormed the country, pushing this alternative. Many constituents of both parties who had turned against the original bill began to favor this alternative, and let their representatives and senators know so, and when at last both bills came to a final vote, the old reform bill failed, although not by much, and the Fish Tank Bill passed by a wide margin, for even those who had still favored the original bill wanted to be seen as doing something for their constituents for whom the old system had not worked while of course most wanted to appease the majority of their constituents who opposed the earlier bill but favored the new bill.
So The Health Care Fish Tank became The Law of The Land. “It said that at least one insurer in every state must provide insurance to those considered high risk coverage, but that these clients must be charged four times the amount of comparable coverage, must prove their ineligibility for other coverage every six months, could not have a physical more than once every three years, could only have the bare minimum even then and if they were found to have a life threatening condition must be dropped at once.”
“So you're giving the smallest possible solution to a huge problem,” said the Speaker of The House to the minority leader after the final votes. “You're essentially trying to fit a whale into your 'Health Care Fish Tank.'”
“We got something done,” he replied simply.
Got something done they had. Got something useful done they had not as far as Thomas Hanklin was concerned when two years after joining this plan because he had had a traumatic brain injury ten years earlier he contracted cancer which with aggressive treatment might have been cured but which once he got 'The Fish Tank' dropped him and he died within two weeks.
Nor did Georgia Blunkinshap consider it useful when her husband died after being dropped because of being H.I.V. Positive and with the amount they'd paid for him in premiums since due to an old back injury he had been ineligible for anything else she did not even have enough money left to give him a proper burial.
And the parents of young Brian Nodart who was born with a bad heart considered it useless since with only one check up every three years and only the bare minimum even then their son's failing heart went unnoticed until he dropped dead at age eleven, could not be revived and they could not even afford a head stone at his grave.
On the other hand,the share holders at the insurance companies these Republicans had insured remained loyal donors were very happy.
“And they're the only ones that really count,” said the minority leader of the House the night before the election he was sure would make him Speaker. “Those who can and do take care of themselves rather than whining about big business not giving them health care when if they had an accident as a child it's their own fault that 'The Fish Tank' is all that they can get and they don't deserve any better or more.” He raised his glass. “To money above all and its love above all other loves.”
All of his Colleagues raised their glasses and drank heartily to that, anticipating a sweep of Congress the next day.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
JOHN OR JADON? OR SUIZI?
JOHN OR JADON? OR SUSIE?
John walked into the House Chamber and sat down in the chair to testify before a joint session of Congress. He felt calm and collected, or as much so as one could under these circumstances, and in his head he kept reciting the calming mantra he had practiced for years, for if he lost his calm today things could go badly for his objective, plus for John losing his calm meant a lot more than it meant for most people, and these senators and representatives would sure get a surprise, not that some didn't deserve that surprise, but overall it would be best not to lose his calm.
“John Noipeint,” said the leader of The House Republicans. “You have come here today to waste all of our time by asking that even more money be wasted on this new health care law, which was totally unnecessary because the old system was doing just fine. Am I correct?”
“Yes, and no, sir,” John responded.
The Representative raised his eye brows quizically. “Yes and no, Mr. Noipient?”
“Yes,” John girded his loins, knowing already this was going to be even more difficult than he had anticipated. “Yes, I have come here today to testify on the new health care law, but no my words will not be a waste of anyone's time, nor my request if granted a waste of money, nor is the new law aa a whole a waste of money, nor was the old just fine for anyone with a preexisting health condition, anyone to poor for private coverage but too well off for Medicaid or a whole host of others.”
“We'll be the judges of all that,” muttered another Republican from his seat. A glance from the committee chair on the other side of the isle silenced him. The chair nodded for John to continue.
“This new law,” John began again. “Has brought health care coverage to thousands if not millions of Americans who prior to this could not purchase health insurance not due to laziness or anything of their making,but due to health conditions which they could not help, having an income gap of the nature I described a moment ago or some other restriction stemming from matters beyond their control but now can obtain health insurance. However, the gap is only totally sealed with regard to those with physical health restrictions. Those of us with mental health issues can still be denied coverage outright or granted coverage for our physical health but with a specific exemption for any mental health issue. Therefore. I am here today to urge you in the strongest terms possible to amend the new law to specifically forbid insurance companies from practicing this form of discrimination.”
“You're a white, able bodied male,” said a woman senator in a wheelchair. “What do you know about discrimination?”
“With all due respect, Senator,” said John, fighting to remain calm. “There are many forms of discrimination. I understand that you may have experienced gender and ability discrimination in your life, but I have a mental condition which if not treated can be just as much of barrier for my functioning as any you've experienced, and my insurance company still refuses to pay for my treatment since it's a condition I've had since birth and so they say is preexisting, and out of pocket I can only afford half the dose my psychiatrist prescribes, so I'm not always functional. So, please, make insurance companies cover mental health too.”
“You look just fine to me,” a Republican Senator begins, and I raise a warning hand, feeling my calm beginning to slip. “What does that mean, Mr. Noipient? You think you can ward off the truth that you just want us to pour more money into a pit of uselessness and bury it with a raised hand? You think you can assuage us from not taking a useless further expense upon another useless expense by...”
Suddenly, Jadon breaks through all of my defenses despite my best efforts to keep him down and my body, under his control now, leap at the man with such force that he falls off his chair and there is a crack beneath my body as it lands on top of him and I feel and see my fists punching him repeatedly.
“Mr. Noipient, control yourself,” my ears hear several voices on both sides of the isle say.
I feel my lips moving in response, though it is not by my will, nor is it even close to my voice that emerges. “John is gone. I am Jadon, and I am angry. This man doubts my existence. Let's see if he still doubts it when he's dead.”
Burly hands reach for my arms, but Jadon is too strong and quick for all of them and thrusts them aside or dodges them, while continuing to punch and bloody the senator.
“You still think I'm imaginary?” I feel Jadon use my mouth to demand. “John is not nearly strong or fast enough to do any of this.”
-Jadon- I plead. -Stop. This is not the way. . .-
“Shut up John,” Jadon says with my mouth. “This is the only way.”
Suddenly I feel a great electric shock pulse through my body and know they've tried tazing Jadon, a huge mistake.
Jadon roars in pain and rage and rips the man beneath my body's hand clean off. Then Jadon is gone, for now.
Before I can step back in the driver's seat, though, Susie steps in. Don't let the name fool you, Susie is worse than Jadon. I stand on my hind legs and roar as my grizzly bear (or that other primate that they thought was tamed but then killed someone) nature asserts itself and through her eyes I see people running for the door. First, I feel my hands with grizzly bear strength rip off the whole arm of the man beneath my body. Then I feel blood and flesh against my teeth, but despite my own revulsion at what Susie is using my body to do, I can gain no purchase inside our shared head. As the man beneath us gives his death cry, I feel my head turn to a young page, apparently too frozen by fear even to run. I want to scream at him to do so, or to stop Susie from attacking him, but I can do neither.
As my hands rip off his leg and he goes down with a horrible scream, I hear a bullet wizzing from behind and duck just in time. That's no stun dart, either, I realize with horror. Their aiming to kill. I try desperately to reign in Susie, but she's even less receptive than Jadon. Four strides and the shooter screams as Susie uses my arms to rip him apart. Then she uses my mouth to give a great roar as she uses my hands to hold both pieces over my head. Then I hear a man cry “Free Fire” and hear bullets rushing at me from all directions. Susie rushes around and under the bullets, using my body to kill three more attackers. Then she uses my body to shatter a rifle between my teeth. She turns my body all the way around while giving a tremendous roar. We go down on all fours, running for the door. Then.
“ugh,” I feel the deadly bullet enter the base of my skull. For one second I am myself, John Noipient again,and then all goes black and I know, and am, no more.
FOLLOWING THE EPISODE WITH JOHN NOIPIENT, THE DEMOCRATS IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE REALIZEDTHAT A REQUIREMENT TO PAY FOR MENTAL HEALTH AS WELL AS PHYSICAL HEATH WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY AND JUST MANAGED TO GET IT THROUGH BOTH CHAMBERSBY THE NARROWEST OF MARGINES, FOR DESPITE THIS OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE THAT SUCH A REQUIRMENT WAS NEEDED, AFTER ALL IF JOHN HAD BEEN ON FULL MEDICATION, HIS GIRL-FRIEND TESTIFIED LATER THAT DAY, HE WOULD NOT HAVE HAD THESE EPISODES AND SO WOUD STILL BE ALIVE, EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN IN BOTH CHAMBERSVOTED AGAINST THIS AMENDMENT.
OBITUARY:
John Noipient, age thirty-seven, born December Twenty-Seventh, 1985 DATES NEED SOME WORK BEFORE THIS STORY ISPUBLISHED, DELETE ALL OF THIS AFTERWARD, died January Fifteenth, 2016, shot by Capital Security when, in testifying before Congress for the need for Mental Health to also be covered by the 2010 Health Care Overhaul Bill, he experienced a violent psychotic episode and killed several in his altered state before being taken down. In lou of flowers, donatins to mental health help organizations are requested by his family, girl-friend Joann Mcdreadge and Sister Kate. Services will be private and so no further information is available.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, NOW?
John walked into the House Chamber and sat down in the chair to testify before a joint session of Congress. He felt calm and collected, or as much so as one could under these circumstances, and in his head he kept reciting the calming mantra he had practiced for years, for if he lost his calm today things could go badly for his objective, plus for John losing his calm meant a lot more than it meant for most people, and these senators and representatives would sure get a surprise, not that some didn't deserve that surprise, but overall it would be best not to lose his calm.
“John Noipeint,” said the leader of The House Republicans. “You have come here today to waste all of our time by asking that even more money be wasted on this new health care law, which was totally unnecessary because the old system was doing just fine. Am I correct?”
“Yes, and no, sir,” John responded.
The Representative raised his eye brows quizically. “Yes and no, Mr. Noipient?”
“Yes,” John girded his loins, knowing already this was going to be even more difficult than he had anticipated. “Yes, I have come here today to testify on the new health care law, but no my words will not be a waste of anyone's time, nor my request if granted a waste of money, nor is the new law aa a whole a waste of money, nor was the old just fine for anyone with a preexisting health condition, anyone to poor for private coverage but too well off for Medicaid or a whole host of others.”
“We'll be the judges of all that,” muttered another Republican from his seat. A glance from the committee chair on the other side of the isle silenced him. The chair nodded for John to continue.
“This new law,” John began again. “Has brought health care coverage to thousands if not millions of Americans who prior to this could not purchase health insurance not due to laziness or anything of their making,but due to health conditions which they could not help, having an income gap of the nature I described a moment ago or some other restriction stemming from matters beyond their control but now can obtain health insurance. However, the gap is only totally sealed with regard to those with physical health restrictions. Those of us with mental health issues can still be denied coverage outright or granted coverage for our physical health but with a specific exemption for any mental health issue. Therefore. I am here today to urge you in the strongest terms possible to amend the new law to specifically forbid insurance companies from practicing this form of discrimination.”
“You're a white, able bodied male,” said a woman senator in a wheelchair. “What do you know about discrimination?”
“With all due respect, Senator,” said John, fighting to remain calm. “There are many forms of discrimination. I understand that you may have experienced gender and ability discrimination in your life, but I have a mental condition which if not treated can be just as much of barrier for my functioning as any you've experienced, and my insurance company still refuses to pay for my treatment since it's a condition I've had since birth and so they say is preexisting, and out of pocket I can only afford half the dose my psychiatrist prescribes, so I'm not always functional. So, please, make insurance companies cover mental health too.”
“You look just fine to me,” a Republican Senator begins, and I raise a warning hand, feeling my calm beginning to slip. “What does that mean, Mr. Noipient? You think you can ward off the truth that you just want us to pour more money into a pit of uselessness and bury it with a raised hand? You think you can assuage us from not taking a useless further expense upon another useless expense by...”
Suddenly, Jadon breaks through all of my defenses despite my best efforts to keep him down and my body, under his control now, leap at the man with such force that he falls off his chair and there is a crack beneath my body as it lands on top of him and I feel and see my fists punching him repeatedly.
“Mr. Noipient, control yourself,” my ears hear several voices on both sides of the isle say.
I feel my lips moving in response, though it is not by my will, nor is it even close to my voice that emerges. “John is gone. I am Jadon, and I am angry. This man doubts my existence. Let's see if he still doubts it when he's dead.”
Burly hands reach for my arms, but Jadon is too strong and quick for all of them and thrusts them aside or dodges them, while continuing to punch and bloody the senator.
“You still think I'm imaginary?” I feel Jadon use my mouth to demand. “John is not nearly strong or fast enough to do any of this.”
-Jadon- I plead. -Stop. This is not the way. . .-
“Shut up John,” Jadon says with my mouth. “This is the only way.”
Suddenly I feel a great electric shock pulse through my body and know they've tried tazing Jadon, a huge mistake.
Jadon roars in pain and rage and rips the man beneath my body's hand clean off. Then Jadon is gone, for now.
Before I can step back in the driver's seat, though, Susie steps in. Don't let the name fool you, Susie is worse than Jadon. I stand on my hind legs and roar as my grizzly bear (or that other primate that they thought was tamed but then killed someone) nature asserts itself and through her eyes I see people running for the door. First, I feel my hands with grizzly bear strength rip off the whole arm of the man beneath my body. Then I feel blood and flesh against my teeth, but despite my own revulsion at what Susie is using my body to do, I can gain no purchase inside our shared head. As the man beneath us gives his death cry, I feel my head turn to a young page, apparently too frozen by fear even to run. I want to scream at him to do so, or to stop Susie from attacking him, but I can do neither.
As my hands rip off his leg and he goes down with a horrible scream, I hear a bullet wizzing from behind and duck just in time. That's no stun dart, either, I realize with horror. Their aiming to kill. I try desperately to reign in Susie, but she's even less receptive than Jadon. Four strides and the shooter screams as Susie uses my arms to rip him apart. Then she uses my mouth to give a great roar as she uses my hands to hold both pieces over my head. Then I hear a man cry “Free Fire” and hear bullets rushing at me from all directions. Susie rushes around and under the bullets, using my body to kill three more attackers. Then she uses my body to shatter a rifle between my teeth. She turns my body all the way around while giving a tremendous roar. We go down on all fours, running for the door. Then.
“ugh,” I feel the deadly bullet enter the base of my skull. For one second I am myself, John Noipient again,and then all goes black and I know, and am, no more.
FOLLOWING THE EPISODE WITH JOHN NOIPIENT, THE DEMOCRATS IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE REALIZEDTHAT A REQUIREMENT TO PAY FOR MENTAL HEALTH AS WELL AS PHYSICAL HEATH WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY AND JUST MANAGED TO GET IT THROUGH BOTH CHAMBERSBY THE NARROWEST OF MARGINES, FOR DESPITE THIS OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE THAT SUCH A REQUIRMENT WAS NEEDED, AFTER ALL IF JOHN HAD BEEN ON FULL MEDICATION, HIS GIRL-FRIEND TESTIFIED LATER THAT DAY, HE WOULD NOT HAVE HAD THESE EPISODES AND SO WOUD STILL BE ALIVE, EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN IN BOTH CHAMBERSVOTED AGAINST THIS AMENDMENT.
OBITUARY:
John Noipient, age thirty-seven, born December Twenty-Seventh, 1985 DATES NEED SOME WORK BEFORE THIS STORY ISPUBLISHED, DELETE ALL OF THIS AFTERWARD, died January Fifteenth, 2016, shot by Capital Security when, in testifying before Congress for the need for Mental Health to also be covered by the 2010 Health Care Overhaul Bill, he experienced a violent psychotic episode and killed several in his altered state before being taken down. In lou of flowers, donatins to mental health help organizations are requested by his family, girl-friend Joann Mcdreadge and Sister Kate. Services will be private and so no further information is available.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, NOW?
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