Now Is The Time

Let us not pretend anymore that the process is fair, that good and stout-hearted people will prevail, or that our representatives in Washington will, on their own, act in our best interests. They will not. They will always act in their own self-interest and unless we collectively make it in their best interest to support health care reform they will not!

In Washington, it is always easier to stop something than to bring about change. That is a fact. That is our history, both recent and past.

Consider health care reform. When we last took a run at doing something about the deplorable and tragic health care situation in the United States in the early 1990s there were around 35-million decent Americans without health care coverage. We chose to do nothing and now, a decade and-a-half later we are approaching 50-million uninsured Americans, many of them vulnerable children and older people. The very people who often are in the most need of health care, particularly preventive care.

Yet our representatives in Washington are about to vacate while there will be no vacation from need of those worthy Americans who have no health care coverage. Sure clinics, charities, and some public institutions offer some help, but, the need and demand is so immense, so dire, and so immediate and unrelenting that many people must go without attention and assistance. In some cases these people become sicker and in some cases they die. Such is truth and such is fact. But, our representatives vacate without finishing the job?

They claim things are moving too fast. Too fast? In 1945 President Harry Truman went before congress and called for universal health care for all Americans. Too fast? The Kaiser's Germany enacted a universal health care plan for its citizens in the nineteenth century. Too fast? I don't think so, the time is right now! And quite well overdue at that!

Special interests (Insurance Oligarchs and Drug Tsars) are spending $1.4-million a day to lobby congress. That number will increase as their TV ads, timed to hit the air while our representatives are participating in their annual slumming forays in their home districts, begin playing during our favorite TV shows. In some markets will be worse than election time.

The right-wing reactionaries are trying to divide us with scare tactics of loss of choice, socialized medicine and health care reform paying for federally funded abortion. Oh yeah, they're going all in on this one. No deceit is left out. No lie is left untold.

If you've never picked up the phone, if you've never written a letter, if you've never visited a district office to take your desires and concerns to your representative and senators, now is the time. Otherwise, this opportunity will pass and things will remain unchanged...well not exactly really; at some point, that 50-million uninsured will become 60-million or more.