Okay, this is serious now. We need real health care reform and I don't mean tomorrow. The only appropriate time for a response to our health care emergency is today.
I get this. And so does my wife. She wrote the following plea to President Obama in the hope that he would listen. It touched me deeply enough to feel like my fellow Kos'ers would appreciate hearing it too.
Will you help spread this around?
Here's what she said:
Dear President Obama,
Our current health care system is killing the people I love.
Last year, you gave me hope that you would stand up for us and repair this broken system. I voted for you for this reason. My mother, who has always voted Republican, voted for you for this reason. My mother in law, who has become cynical about politics, voted for you for this reason.
And the system is literally killing people I hold dear. Right now.
My mother in law, who does not have health insurance, stalled in seeking diagnosis for a lump she discovered in her breast. She hesitated because the health care industry misled her about the costs and reliability of a biopsy that failed to tell her anything significant about the lump.
She was misled to the point where she felt it better to take her chances than to pay for further expensive tests of questionable dependability -- especially from a system that had betrayed her trust. By the time she felt the sense of urgency that drove her to pay for an expensive biopsy (which led to the diagnosis), the cancer had spread throughout her entire body. She is now dying from cancer, and is constrained to the most risky clinical studies for treatment because she cannot afford the cost of treatment on her own.
My husband and I do not have health insurance because several times we have been denied the care we needed when we did have health insurance. We felt that we were paying an outrageous amount for nothing. We don't trust the health insurance companies to take care of our lives. We don't have any real choices.
We need healthcare that is not driven by profits. Profit will always win out over care if it remains part of the equation.
Even if you don't think you can win, please fight for us. Fight for our lives. Don't just fight the fights you can win, fight the fights that need fighting. This is not the time to negotiate your values, and the values of the American people who need you. It is immensely important to the people who elected you, and even to the people who didn't, that you stand fast to your values and the promises you made in your campaign -- values that say you care about the well-being of the American people.
Even if you don't think you can win, fight anyway. The people will rally behind you and use all of our strength to push you forward, if you push for us. If you don't, you will lose our sacred trust. Your people are pleading with you to put our fight first. We are depending on you to do the right thing.
Sincerely,
Jessica Lisiewski
MPA Candidate 2010
Evans School of Public Affairs
University of Washington
Seattle, WA