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All messages are published
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The general topic of this message is Health:
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Subject:
Yes on a public option, No on the Baucus Bill
To:
Rep. Jane Harman
October 2, 2009
Dear Representative,
I would like to let you know that I support a public option in healthcare reform. I do not support the Baucus Bill.
I vote. Below is a letter I sent this week to every major California newspaper.
Thank you for all your hard work in representing the people of California.
Twenty-Five, and Far From Invincible
I am twenty-five, and I have not had health insurance since I was nineteen.
Why don't I have health insurance?
It's not because I think I am invincible--I worry about what might happen to me if I get sick or get hurt accidentally all of the time.
It's not because I don't work for a living. I have worked 30-50 hours a week since I was 18—and never made enough to afford even the most basic insurance.
It's not because I don't ever get sick or get hurt. Last month I lost both of my two jobs because of a shoulder injury which prevented me from performing the tasks which were necessary to my work.
It's not because I prefer my local non-profit community clinic instead of having insurance. When I visited my local clinic to address my shoulder injury, they refused to treat it seriously and prescribed me two over-the-counter painkillers, for which they billed the organization over $100 total.
It's not because I can't get on my parents' health insurance plans. My parents can't afford health insurance anymore, either.
My mom was just diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disorder which affects the heart and lungs the same way rheumatoid arthritis affects the joints of the knuckles. The Lupus Foundation of America says that, before proper treatment was available, most people died of lupus within five years of diagnosis. With current medications and treatments, life expectancy for lupus patients is rarely reduced at all.
But without health insurance, without medication, without treatment, the outcome of my mother's life is subject to statistics which are dismissed as relics of the past.
The current state of the health insurance industry relegates us all to a standard of living which is so poor, Americans remember it as part of a dismal time which is now long gone. But it is today. It is now. It is not what America was made for.
As an American, as a daughter, as a person who is far from invincible: I support a healthcare reform plan that includes a public insurance option.
Sincerely,
Jacquelyn Adams
Santa Monica , CA
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