The Public Option… and You!

The President is contemplating dropping the ‘public option’! I voted for this President because he ‘promised us change – change we can believe in. I was so infuriated by the President’s reluctance to use the majorities that he has in Congress to fulfill his promise to give us Health Care reform that I wrote him a letter that I hope reaches him before his speech on Wednesday.

In that letter, I told the President that word on the street is that ‘he has been made and played’ by the Republican Party. Together with the Blue Dog Democrats, the mission, the effort to put a preliminary bill on the floor, has been all but destroyed. How can I blame the President for this debacle? Easy, he allowed the effort to put a bi-partisan bill on the floor to over-shadow the vision to bring affordable Health Care to fruition!

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Americans, by a show of hands, supports the public option. Here is what the public option will do for many of those with no form of Health Care… (1) It will put a net under around sixteen million people currently without any form of health care… (2) It will provide low cost premiums to Small Business owners, making it possible for millions more to be covered by affordable Health Care… (3) It will exclude Health Care to anyone that is illegally in the country (no Health Care card, no medical care)… (4) Reduce the cost to hospital Emergency Rooms giving care to the uninsured!

You… citizens of America, must attend the Town Hall Meetings that are being held in your areas. You can flood the President’s desk with your letters as I did; you can write your Congressmen and tell them that you want a Health Care Bill before the November 2010 elections! Failing to do so means that you are just as much at fault for the current impasse on Health Care as all the other players that are refusing, for selfish reasons, to give everyone affordable Health Care.

The Republican Party and its pundits have lied to their core group of supporters – elderly, rural and southern Whites who would rather believe a lie before they read a credible document that refutes the claims (lies) being made by the Republican Party and Michael Steele. How else can we justify the claims of the uninformed that government ‘control’ of Health Care will destroy Health Care, as they know it? Most of these people are registered Medicare recipients, for Christ’s sake!

Another major player in the crusade to derail Health Care is Richard L. Scott – never heard of him, you should have? Mr. Richard L. Scott was head of Columbia/HCA, major Health Care provider, that dismissed him for fraudulent practices while employed as its CEO.

“Once lauded for building Columbia/HCA into the largest health care company in the world, Mr. Scott was ousted by his own board of directors in 1997 amid the nation’s biggest health care fraud scandal. The company’s guilty plea and payment of $1.7 billion to settle charges including the overbilling of state and federal health programs was taken as a repudiation of Mr. Scott’s relentless bottom-line approach.
“He hopes people don’t Google his name,” said John E. Hartwig, a former deputy inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, one of various state and federal agencies that investigated Columbia/HCA when Mr. Scott was its chief executive.”

We cannot afford for these individuals to influence the outcome of Health Care reform, but together with the Republican Party and the division within the Democratic Senate, they are winning!

The other issue that I think that you should know of is the covert method that the insurance industry uses to insure that you never get the best premium price for our insurance policy – territorial priorities! The insurance companies decide who is able to buy insurance by barring only but a select few to buy insurance in certain States. Because of this enigma, you will never have competition between the insurance companies even though it appears that you have choices. The other factoid that you may not know about is that State Insurance Commissions condone this practice by writing laws to support it.

Know the players influencing the way you obtain, use, and pay for Health Care!

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control. – Rodney A. Davis

Walk A Mile In My Shoes - Silence Is Not Golden

You spoke of Geraldo and how he is a different person when he begins to talk about race and the injustices done to minorities. You say that you do not understand why Geraldo, a person who has it all, should get so uptight. Geraldo is just like the rest of us, he is a minority first and a successful television personality second. He knows that all it takes is one racial bigot to make him feel like two cents in a lint-filled purse.

I know that you have heard the saying "You haven't lived until you have walked a mile in myshoes"; well, that is what seeps out no matter how much a minority tries to stay above the fray.

I joined the Navy in 1964 after the Department of Defense decided to allow Blacks and otherminorities to strike for other rates besides Cook and Steward. I had the brains and the determination to make a difference and I was determined to do so.

For the first twenty years of my life as I grew up in New Orleans, no one had ever called me a'N....'. Never knew that word, but I had seen the things that occurred because Blacks should know there place - can't use this bathroom, don't drink from this fountain, and we don't wantyou swimming in the same pool with us. Try growing up and experiencing that you are not human because of the color of your skin. Try to understand why a White person has a derogatory name for every other race on the face of the Earth and minorities can only call a White man a gringo, honkie, or whitey.

Whites, racially motivated Whites, think like that. You may not be the guy that ever thinks in that manner and that is good, but 'you' don't make a strong enough effort to put those in check that do. "In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control" – Rodney A. Davis. Goggle that, you will find that I own it and it is true.

You know why you see very few Blacks at these town hall meetings - those against the reform ofhealth care are so into the lies that they have been told that they are allowing racial hatred of the President, who is Black, to incite them to more racial hatred. We see it and know that any effort to represent is going to cause more grief for the Health Care reform.

When you have a person screaming at the top of their lungs that they don't want socialism only to find out later that they are on social security using Medicare... it lets you know that your original assessment of them was correct - they are ignorant. An ignorant person that thinks that he is in power is more dangerous than a man with a gun.

You have no idea how close to Civil War America is at this moment. If anyone tries to do harm to Obama, it will not be like with Martin Luther King; it will not be like with Malcolm X. America's silent majority, those that think as you need to be up front and vocal... NOW! You have a choice... you can keep a low profile or you can make a difference by sending a message that nothing is going to return to the days shortly after the first Civil War.

Read your history book and see how much of a difference Blacks were making right after the Civil War. Blacks were elected to office after the war; opening businesses, and then Rutherford B. Hayes made a deal with the Whigs to be President and Blacks were enslaved... never again!

Go goggle Black inventors, find out just how much 'the rest of the world' should be grateful to the minds of Black. Your refrigerator and air conditioner were invented by Blacks; the red light, blood transfusions were invented by Blacks. Charles Drew, the man that perfected the blood transfusion process died when he was involved in an accident in the South for lack of acceptance to the nearest hospital where he could have received a 'blood transfusion' and medical care

b e c a u s e he was B L A C K!

I hope that you never have to walk a mile in my shoes... you would never survive!