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.