Money. It's a Hit.

So, really.  Don't give me any do goody-good bullshit.  I'm watching.  I'm listening.  It's all I can do these days.  I'd rather be distracted.  Trust me on that.  I'd love to have gone to work this morning and still be there now.  I can't.  I'm injured.  In the course of the treatment I've been begging and borrowing to afford (I refuse to steal), I've discovered two things--One, I have arthritis in my knees.  That's right.  Both knees.  And two, since I've been stuck unable to afford treatment for so long, unable to move about like I once did, the weight I tried to lose stayed on--and I developed full blown diabetes.  Great.  Two more medical conditions I can not afford, and two conditions that keep me away from the only kinds of work I've had since I was a teenager--retail, or construction.  As poorly as I'm getting around these days, finishing my education is going to be quite a challenge, too.  So much for that office job (with the occasional field work).

I sit around between my weekly physical therapy appointments (and my at-home upkeep sessions) watching whatever anyone else has turned on.  To my chagrin, news is going 14 hours a day around here.  I hear about freed journalists.  I see pictures of the Capital complex.  I hear, and I shudder while listening to, speeches.  And monologues..."reports", if you will. 

I see commercials about "conservatives" for patients' "rights".  I know the face of the guy who founded the group.  And for some profoundly hard to understand reason to me, the guy actually has the nerve to show his face in public.

"Hey...When I was 13 years old, weren't you the head of the HMO my parents belonged to?  Or, didn't your company acquire it?  Also, didn't you, when I was a tad closer to 14, have to testify before Congress about your company's fundamentally flawed billing practices for Medicare?  Were you not also at least indicted on 14 counts (one for every year of my life up to that point) on Medicare fraud?  And, now, you come out pretending to be concerned about my rights as a patient?  How dare you insult me, sir.  I might have been young, but I remember the uproar you caused for my family--and untold numbers of others'.  And I know you're blocking something that could benefit me in my darkest hour of need--by painting your opponents in your damned color scheme."

That's right.  It's a gas.  Grab that cash with both hands, and maybe you'll have enough to get through the clinic's door.

Hah.  There has also been a newly former governor babbling lately.  Something about her parents and her disabled child having to face our President's "death panels". 

Get away.  Is that the evil we're all about to face these days?

It wasn't this President's Single Payer Plan panel that told me a couple of years ago that, "You'll pay 900 dollars this year, then turn around and pay another 900 dollars to re-enroll next year before we cover your pre-existing high blood pressure.  Sure, you need the drugs right now, and you'll be forced to pay full price for them while you're paying your monthly dues.  Did we mention on top of that 1800, you'll be out monthly fees?  Well, you will."  Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that a private insurance company telling me something along those lines?  Does the word "insurance" apply, or should it be pronounced as one of my great-great-great uncles up in Cicero, Illinois pronounced it?  (He was Irish, and from a suburb of Chicago...And, yes.  He was in direct competition with Al Capone.)

I overheard one thing too many on this debate.  I heard some "ordinary person", who opposes our current push for reform.  "This isn't about health care.  This is about fighting Socialism."  ....No it isn't.  It's about money--yours and mine--and the folks who keep sucking it out of us in new, creative ways.  It's about how they're playing us for saps, and raising any specter they can (apparently, except for Arlen) to keep us scared and distracted, while more generations of schmucks like me get sick, need help, give them money hand over fist....and are forced to wade through a bunch of unregulated, and decreasingly regulated nonsense. 

Money.  So they say.  Shell it out, and maybe your doctor your insurance company will pay.  Or maybe not...and you're out of luck.  And health.