I Should Be Relieved

I should be happy and relieved today since millions of Americans will soon be able to get the same or similar health care to mine.  Americans today who get a tragic chronic illness can feel more hopeful about getting the care they need.


But I am depressed.  I saw too much ignorance and ugliness in the debate leading up to this bill.  I saw a video of a small man in a wheel chair with Parkinson's carrying a sign in support of the bill and being surrounded and yelled at by 6-10 white men who told him to go out and get a job!  They threw money at him as if he was some beggar rather than a citizen with a right to an opinion and a right to give that opinion.  He was very brave sitting their with these ugly souls towering over him.


I drove out of the city on Saturday and was delayed by a long cadre of police motorcycles and cars going into the city and learned later that it was because of anti-health care bill protesters angrily surrounding several black Congressmen calling them racial names and spitting on them.  They also shouted homophobic epithets to Rep. Barney Frank the next day.  Who are these dangerous people?


Some Tea Party protesters carried signs saying that if the bill passed they would incite violence.  My sister who is an attorney said last year that her Republican legal colleagues have actually purchased guns to be prepared...for what I do not know.  Where are their critical thinking skills?


This was not a bill about sending our men and women to war.  This was not a bill about rescinding the constitution.  This was a bill about caring for our citizens who through no fault of their own need a hand.  These are not welfare junkies but people who have lost jobs or lost fights with the death panels of the insurance agencies.  We need to stand by them.  This is about the numerous hospitals that are closing their doors because they can not continue to provide health care for those who have no insurance and still balance their books. 


Conservative Congressmen were far from conservative in their rhetoric.  There were far from statesmanlike in their incitement of the part of the  crowd that was protesting the bill.  The difference between a democracy and other forms of government is that you have the right make your argument peacefully and without threat of violence.


OK, I am done.  I do not like writing like this  because this is not what my blog is about and because I cannot change the minds of others.  But I am glad I got it off MY chest.