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Authors, sign in!I mentioned in a previous post that I was trying to rehab a knee injury. Little did I know it was a torn ACL.
I had surgery. Even with insurance it has been a pretty expensive process. But I am blessed to have a cousin who took on the expense of housing me, feeding me, and providing any medication and supplies I needed. I have parents who drove from Missouri and contributed as well. I have other friends who brought food and loaned me exercise equipment to help me recover faster.
My recovery has been faster than most, I believe. I am grateful.
But I can't help but be troubled by my friends who need surgery and don't have insurance...nor could they afford it even if they did.
One friend particularly disturbs me...
As we walked and talked the other day, he stopped. His hip was convulsing. I paused and asked if he was ok. He said he was; his hip just sometimes acts like it wants to move out of socket.
After standing for about 30 seconds and the shaking hip continued, I quickly grabbed a chair for him to sit in. I don't think he could have moved at that point to go get the chair himself.
My friend is only 24 years old.
I asked him what caused his hip to do that. He explained that he had an old basketball injury from high school. At the time of the injury, his family was poor and had no health insurance so they didn't (couldn't) fix it.
As he got older, he found out that the injury had progressed and gotten bad enough that he needed hip replacement surgery. However, they won't do a hip replacement on a 24-year old. Besides that, he is an adult on his own now, has graduated from college, and is now in seminary. He is on his own and, once again, doesn't have insurance. He could at least use physical therapy...but, again, no insurance.
He takes 16 hours in seminary. He works a 30+ hour a week job. What has he done to *not* deserve health care??
We need a public option. Please, President Obama, push for the public option.
But, President Obama can't do it on his own. We need to help.
Published November 3, 2009 by Janet Morrison |
Permalink
| Tags:
Activism
Barack Obama
Congress
Health Care Reform
Health Insurance
Public Option
Comments (1)
Good post. Thank you.
All Americans deserve the public option. Each of us, regardless of our income level, deserve to pay less for health care.
The public option isn't a free hand out. And, it's not free. What it is - is less expensive.
It's an insurance plan whereby each subscriber pays a premium.
But the premium will be lower because no percentage of the money paid in premiums will go to Wall Street, will go to company profits or will go to high executive salaries. By cutting out those that seek to get rich from our limited health care dollars, we will each get to actually USE our health care benefits for actual health care.
The public option is a lower cost insurance plan and all Americans deserve access to it.
Posted by Nora Thomason
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November 3, 2009 3:36 PM
Posted on November 3, 2009 15:36