But We Don’t Need Healthcare Reform

Gah! Stories like this make me want to shake certain people.

A healthy, four month old baby boy, that only consumes breast milk, is considered obese and denied health insurance. This is wrong on so many levels. It makes me angry. It also frustrates me that the same people who claim to be pro-life don’t support health reform legislation. They call it socialist, communist or even Nazi. Because insuring a healthy, chubby baby is such a wacky idea. That baby is already born so it doesn’t deserve protection, right? Wait…

Luckily, because of all the bad publicity the insurance company decided to change their decision. Out of the goodness of their hearts, right? I’ll bet. The problem is, there are too many people that are being denied coverage for shitty reasons just like that little baby. Things that may or may not be out of their control. Once diagnosed with something you may as well start a savings account in case you get really sick. Because even if your insurance company keeps taking your money for years, the minute you get really sick there are people whose sole job is to find any stupid little reason not to pay for your health care. Don’t believe me? Ask him, or her, or these people, or her… The list could go on and on.

But wait, it may *gasp* cost healthy people a bit more. Not that! Don’t make me help my fellow man! Don’t force me to act Christ-like or anything. *rolls eyes* The funny thing is, the people I know who support heathcare reform the most are usually non religious. The religious folks… well hopefully their tithe money is going to good use because they don’t want another cent taken. Not all Christians of course are against healthcare reform and not all non religious folks support it. But in my experience, far too many Repulican/ Conservative/ Right wing/ Christians/ Whatever you want to call them are too busy protesting abortion to realize there are men, women and children who are already born that need help. Why don’t they matter?

I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. I don’t consider myself part of either party. I don’t care if you’re a Christian or not. This is a human issue not a political one. See, it’s easy to be dismissive about healthcare until something bad happens to you or someone you love. I’ve been uninsured. It sucks and it’s terrifying. Thank God I’m a healthy person and nothing horrible happened to me but I never want to be in that scary place again. This is why I feel so strongly about this issue. And this is why I can’t understand people who put politics ahead of what is best for the country. Winning an election or keeping a little bit more of your paycheck shouldn’t be more important than a person’s life.

The whole thing makes me sick…

but don’t tell my insurance company.

Obama Rally

Joel and I live on the north side of Chicago. That’s about four hours from Indianapolis but when we found out Barack Obama was holding a rally there we decided it was well worth the drive. It didn’t matter that the night before Joel and I had tickets to a show downtown Chicago and were out until around 11:30pm the night before. We jumped into bed as quickly as we could and set our alarms for 12:50am. Seriously.

By about 2am we were on the road. After a quick stop to pick up my sister Liz and her son Hunter we were on our way. Poor Joel was the driver and I’m a bit embarrased to say I wasn’t much help keeping him awake and slept like a baby almost the entire way there. He is pretty amazing though and got us there safely. By the time we parked and were in line it was about 7:30am. *yawn*

It was freeeezing. According to my iPhone it was only 38 degrees but that probably helped keep us awake.

The gate opened at 9am and we filed in through the metal detectors. Some of the volunteers were instructing us to fill in the sides… but I’m not very good at listening sometimes and got us a spot directly in front of the podium with only about five rows of people in front of us. Now we just had to wait for two more hours until 11am when he was supposed to speak…

Which turned into nearly three hours since he was late….

Hunter managed to keep himself entertained and helped with the landscaping in the process.

When he finally arrived it was a good speech although nothing I hadn’t already heard from his other speeches.

This is how close we were (thanks to me *wink*)

Not fully satisfied, at the end I again used my pushiness to my advantage and was thisclose to him.

Out of 35,000 people I managed to get within arms length.

With our mission accomplished, we turned right around and drove home. It was a lot of fun and goes on my list of crazy adventures I’ve had simply for the sake of having them. And if he is elected President next week I certainly got some amazing pictures to show my grandkids.

Go vote, November 4th 2008!