Murder by health care greed

 October 1, 2013 at 2:11pm

                         
US Congressman Pat Tiberi is a lying son of a bitch. There in NOT broad bi-partisan support repeal of the medical device tax. If he thinks there is, let him introduce a bill and see where it goes. A one year shutdown is NOT a compromise on defunding the program.  It's still a gun to the head power play that would have them back again making an end runaround how we pass laws. There will never be a clean funding bill again if we concede to this. And the delay in law given to businesses with more than 50employees is a concession given them, and the laws administrators, more time to get ready to meet reporting rules. And now for them say “what’s good for big business is should be good for all Americans” is the reward the administration gets for yielding to pressure from big business. For them to flip this on Dems is another example of what kind of humans we're talking about here. The enrollment process for people without insurance IS ready to begin, and WILL begin Oct. 1 2013 whether or not there is a government shutdown. I heard an  estimate by a health insurance researcher (Kaiser Health News) who said as many as 9 million people will get insurance next year. In human terms that means,roughly, fill OSU stadium with uninsured people, each one of them an individual, all poor or working poor, and of course among them some have health problems that will kill them in the next year. They will have heart attacks,cancers, strokes, etc. that could be discovered with a simple visit to a family doctor and NOT kill them if they knew now.  Now, fill the stadium again 90 times! Then you start to see how insidious it is to let people die for political advantage, or because you're a 1%er clutching onto every frigging dollar.

Right now as I write, I'm listening to Republicans in the House Chamber ranting like raving lunatics, as they always do, because, you know, he who is loudest wins. (When the law is on your side, argue the law. When the law is not on your side, POUND THE TABLE!)

• How important is one year?

 My wife's sister Lisa was a small farmer/horse trainer and like many small farmers she went without seeing a doctor and without health insurance because of the insane cost of insurance for self-employed people.  Lisa was a very strong and independent woman who didn’t suffer fools and who even had a bit of an anti-government streak. Not Tea Party but no liberal by any means. In a world with mostly monied horse owners obviously don’t have a health insurance problem there are so many others in the stables and at the tracks that are uninsured that some tracks have free clinics. So when she had a problem that could well have been caused by so much time in a saddle, she went to the free clinic. They told her she should have a medical text that would have cost her close to 1 thousand dollars.  She didn’t have the test because of the cost. One year later when the symptoms got worse she went to a hospital emergency room where they found her with eaten up with cancer. At that moment the deck was stacked against her. The oncologist said if found when it was only in one organ the odds would have been in her favor.  Now it was multi-organ.  Lisa was combative by nature and she fought like mad for her life.  It took nine months for the cancer to kill her. It was a tragic, untimely and completely avoidable death. The way I most honesty feel about it is that Lisa was murdered by health care greed.

We MUST put an end to those kinds of stories.

                             Lisa and my wife Sandy took one last
                             Trip together.

                             You see what chemo was doing to Lisa
                              yet, amazingly, she still had a sense
                              of humor about it.