As I write this it the times stands at 10:58 pm eastern standard time.
When the clock strikes midnight I will be uninsured.
Like many people all across the country I have lost my job. I subsequently lost it on Febuary 3rd 2010. For the past three years I have spent most of my time ether attenting a local community college or teaching autistic preschool children as an ABA aide. My former employer during my tenure switched insurance companies a total of three times in three years. They finally settled on Blue Cross Blue Shield.
I've seen the doctor a total of four times this year. I am very lucky to be in full health with only a slightly tarnished liver from an over enthusiastic teenage period. I am also 26 years old now and frightened.
I'm far to old to be covered by my parents insurance in any way. I still don't make enough money to afford the type of premium payments Blue Cross Blue Shield demand for individual plans. My very slight liver condition was catagorized as a pre exsisting condition and I now run the risk of being denied ANY coverage at all. If and when I can possibly afford it.
For those of us stuck in this limbo I ask an often repeated question.
WHERE IS MY PUBLIC OPTION?
I've been given a whole litany of reason as to why I am not getting my magical fantastic super deluxe socialistic pony. None of them make sense. None of it is what the three year olds I taught would say "NO FAIR"
I was a strong Hillary Clinton supporter in the primaries. I even had to take a small break from DailyKos for a while during the Obama/Clinton war that was being waged here. However I came right back into the camp when Clinton finally conceded. I had a great deal of hope and still do yet I feel like our president has been acting like the Conciliator In Chief instead of the inspirational character that candidate Obama showed himself to be.
This is scary to me
I remembered hoping that it would turn out differently. That she would be proven wrong and that Obama would be the progressive I had dreamed of.
I refuse to blame this solely on Obama though. Rahm, Lieberman, Snow, Nelson, Bayh, Reid, or any other person that has put corporate interests above the publics are at the heart of the problem. I don't want to compromise anymore. We never even tried on single payer. Then it was well we can have the public option. Then it was a triggered public option. Then it was a co opt exchange public option. Then Joe Lieberman decided to be god and said No to me.
WHY?
Stop with the compromises. If the lesson to be taken away from Scott Brown's victory is that they have to be more conservative then these people are ether willfully ignorant or are so attatched to the tit of their special interests that they simply don't care.
I am not a political fatalist. I don't believe that because there is a sestemic problem in the system that I should throw my hands up in the air and give up. I marched against the Iraq war as a teenager.
I campaigned for NYPIRG for tougher enviromental standards on mercury emmisions. I've given to act blue at my own personal expense. I was 17 when Bush was elected and I've survived those years.
From Plame, Clean Skies, Patriot Act, to domestic wireless survallience. Give me something to be motivated about. Give me something that I can say all that hard work, tears, knocking on doors, railing against the conversative members of my family with logic, wit, and most importantly facts was worth it. Right now I don't feel it was. I want this feeling to be fleeting.
I PAID ATTENTION.
I PAID MY PROGRESSIVE DUES.
DO IT AND PASS A ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION THROUGH RECONCILIATION.
People will love you for it and you'll be on the right side of history.
It is now 12:02
I've lost my insurance.
Thank fucking god I am healthy.