Friday, March 3, 2017

Makes You Think

Sometimes our own political outrage and shock at the behavior of those in power makes us forget about the people who live without any. Most of the time I live in a relatively quiet neighborhood in a small Georgia town. Most of the time the loudest noise I hear is someone's car going by or one of my odd neighbors who owns a Harley and blasts his 1980 hair rock when he goes on a daily ride. I live on the corner of two streets with a nice yard, a quaint little house with ivy on the front, and a garden and blooming peach tree... we won't even talk about the fact that it is blooming and February....

But there are also people in my neighborhood and area that live very different lives, wrought with difficulty and hard choices and sometimes that difficulty can lead to violence. Today, as my son and I played out in the backyard... in my neighborhood that was so quiet...that I heard a car stop at the three way stop down the street.... I looked up to see a drive-by shooting. Thankfully no one was hurt, but I wasn't aware as I heard the shots echo down my street and immediately find myself terrified for myself and my son...we had to hide behind our house, I had to explain to my four year old why there were over a dozen police working down the street all day and why one came and took my statement. 
It was...just a bad experience. 

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It has been almost a week since I wrote the above, the street has been commonly quiet since Monday, nothing has happened and everything is as it was, but I find myself a bit more aware and a bit more careful when going outside. My son is four, he loves to be outside and to run through the yard, playing with the dogs and his toys... but I found myself a great deal more cautious and observant the entire time we've been out this week.

In Politics...

Well, first the President displayed the ability to read a speech and half the country breathed a sigh of relief that I will admit, I have no earthly idea why.
This should not be the standard people...
Just because a speech was measured, does not mean it wasn't riddled with dangerous rhetoric and the same pushy xenophobic logic he has been pushing this entire time. His immigration stance has not changed, he lauded it in his speech and continued to paint enemies of the state with a wide brush... this is not toned down, this is scary. 
Thankfully, well not really, because this is the world we have to live in...
The Jeff Sessions chaos has overshadowed the fact that when pressed Trump can give a speech without flailing.
How many people have to have met with Russian officials and then lied about it to cause those who voted for Trump to ponder whether or not this is a problem? I say all of them... I know some pretty staunch Trump supporters and they either 1. do not care 2. think its all lies. 
Meanwhile, dreamers are being deported for speaking out and the immigration push to get "bad hombres" off the street have removed fathers, grandmothers, and people who have lived in this country since they were 7... with no felonies or anything dangerous in their records and Boeing, is getting rid of 1800 jobs. 


Healthcare:

I want to say something about Healthcare because it affects members of my family very differently and it infuriates me to no end.
First, I support the original reach of the ACA and the goals that program entailed. Through it (implemented properly without the interference and destruction of it in the states), most people had the opportunity to get affordable care and the insurance pools should have made coverage overall cheaper... but business and state interest got involved and things went off track quickly and I will be honest, the ACA is not functioning the way it was meant to or should have.

Right now, my husband...through his paycheck, pays almost a grand a month for our family's healthcare. That being said, we have no deductible, we can go to the doctor whenever we want, and a stay in the hospital will not leave us destitute. But, I remember, before he had this job, how often we would linger in sickness because we had no or bad coverage and it was not worth it to risk spending a ton of money just to see a doctor. It was horrific and I never want to go back to that, our insurance is expensive, but its worth it.  That being said, my mother-in-law has NO insurance at all. Her husband makes too much to have them qualify for medicare, his employee insurance premiums to cover her are outlandish, and she also cannot qualify for any ACA program... she is stuck, without insurance, and at the will of a doctor whether or not she can get care she needs without putting herself in debt to do so... its criminal to me to see that. Why is this though? IS this the ACA, kind of... not really.  The State they live in makes it very difficult for the ACA to work, there are provisions in that state's law that did not take the medicare expansion and thus did not take monies that would help people like her get insurance....at the same time, this is the ACA's fault.... and if we are going to change it, which I have no problem with, we need to replace it with something that will take care of people because healthcare should not depend on people's income.... if you are sick, you deserve treatment.   Simple.

I want universal coverage or a single payer option, I think that is the only way healthcare can work and I think these profit-monger companies need to get out of the process.  We have too many people dying because of finance not care available and that is completely disgusting in one of the richest nations on earth. 

If you are sick you should get to see a doctor and not worry about whether or not you can afford the care you need to survive... that is a right I think that is covered by our constitution and the bill of rights we so love. 

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