WHEN POLITICS KILLS KINDRED

'CAN YOU KILL YOUR COUSIN?' BY MATTHEW LUCAS BECKETT I'd been listening to the crap The Right puts out about the law that says Health Insurance Companies have to treat those of us deemed subhuman by Profits Over People like Human Beings for long enough. I had been deemed subhuman for ten years because I had had a Traumatic Brain Injury when I was eight years old, and I had had enough of their badmouthing the law that said we were in fact full Human Beings, particularly as some of these voices were of my own family,people who were supposed to love me. So I called a family meeting of all of the family that could possibly make it. When all were gathered in our kitchen and I was sure that I had everyone's undivided attention, I went to the light switch, the sun having set hours ago, and began. “All right, Uncle Willy and Aunt Martha, the two of you and each of your children and children in law have before you some kind of deadly weapon. You shall know why presently. As you all know, when I was eight years old I got hit by a car. Within my car accident, I suffered a traumatic brain injury.” I paused for a sip of diet coke and to make sure that I still had all of their undivided attention. “Because of this 'preexisting condition', since becoming too old to be covered through my parents, I have been unable to retain Health Insurance other than a Risk Pool that State Law requires always be twice the rate of comparable private coverage and to continue with each year I must prove that I have no other options. Also, the lowest deductible I can get even at that rate is $1,000, so the $735 bill for the therapy on my left arm a few years back had to be paid entirely out of pocket. With the passage of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, however, come 2014 Health Insurance Companies could no longer discriminate against adults like me, and right now cannot discriminate against minors with preexisting conditions. None of the alternatives that your side has put forward in its 'repeal and replace' campaign even acknowledge that there is such a thing as a preexisting conditions exclusion, which leads me to believe that you think that all of those of us for whom Profits Over People did not work are all just subhuman and all ought to to just kill ourselves or be put to death. Well, here's your big chance. If you would all please point your weapons at me. All of you, please.” With much reluctance and quite a bit of coaxing all six of them eventually leveled their guns and knives at my head or chest. “This way, depending on what choice is made, no one ever need know for sure who did it. In a moment, I shall turn the light off. If in ten seconds, I turn it back on, all of you will stop ever saying or even thinking anything bas about Justice Care and instead commit to joining me in doing all that can be done to fight its undoing in both the legal and political arenas. There is only one alternative, and that is for me to not turn the light back on in ten seconds. The only way for that to happen is for one of you to kill me, now.” I turn off the light and start to count seconds. I make it to second eight when I hear and feel bullets and knives penetrate my head and chest, and then for me the world goes permanently black.

What REALLY Matters

While Republicans whine about President Obama's support for Gay Marriage, children starve on street corners, homeless people die of exposure in the street and people die of treatable diseases either because they were cut from the Roles of Medicaid to save their States' money or because they have a preexisting Health Condition and are not poor enough for Medicaid but not rich enough for a Risk Pool required by state law to always be twice the rate of comparable, privzte coverage. Any True Follower of Jesus Cchrist would be more concerned about the plight of "The Least of THese" (THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW, CHAPTER 25, verses 31-46)in our nation today than about a matter Jesus never even touches on in any of The Four Gospels.