Guaranteed Healthcare

For the United States to be one of the richest countries in the world, it is one of the poorest countries when it comes to affordable, quality health care. It is sad and a down right shame for folks who work all of their life to be denied health care coverage when they are in desperate need for it. It is a disgrace for people who have to continue to work because they cannot afford to pay their health care coverage. When an individual has to choose between paying the rent, and affording their medications. When an individual has to choose between buying food or walking out of the pharmacy without their meds. Men and women, who work 40+ hours a week, can’t afford their medications. Folks have to choose to pay for the food / rent or buy their medicine. Individuals have maxed out their credit cards to purchase their meds. Folks have died for the lack of health care coverage. When my 12 year old grandson, says take my allowance and buy Pawpaw’s medicine. Come on now, wake up America! And this is the land of milk and honey. What is wrong with this picture? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually reported that 54.5 million people were uninsured for at least part of the year. Health Insurance Coverage: Early Release of Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, 2006. Centers for Disease Control. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur200706.pdf We the people of the United States of America, DEMAND universal health care for ALL 302,427,755 Americans (population of United States – www.census.gov), rich or poor, and yes, that even includes the middle class Americans. If you are rich, why worry about affordable health care coverage? Why worry about medication? You don’t have too – because you have the money. If you are poor, the government takes care of you. And please before you say that I am downing the rich or making fun of the poor – I am not. It is just the truth. However, if you are one of millions of Americans – who work – and live from paycheck to paycheck, and you are in the middle class – if you have an illness, and if you are out of work due to that illness – will you be on the streets? Will you lose your home – the “American dream”? Or will you just die – like so many other Americans? Who have been either denied their health care coverage or who can’t afford to buy their medication? Is that what the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies want? To go ahead and write someone off because that the insurance/pharmaceutical company doesn’t want to pay for their health care coverage? We DEMAND and DEMAND NOW not tomorrow – DEMAND NOW in our lifetime – Universal health care for all Americans! We the people of the United States of American are sick and tired and some folks are even dying waiting for the quality affordable healthcare in this country. One might even ask – does this make you proud to be an American? We the people of the United States of America have the right to vote. We have the right to freedom of speech. If the presidential candidates, the candidates who are running for senate/house in the 50 states; even the candidates who are running for governor, mayor, and even the state offices – do not have on their agenda to help us the American people to obtain Universal health care – we the people of the United State of America WILL NOT vote you into office. We the people of the United States of America need to hold our elected officials accountable! It is time for the people of the United States of America to lift our voices loud and clearly and to be heard from sea to shining sea. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” So while no one can know for sure precisely what Dr. King would have been advocating today, those who share his vision of a society free of injustice and inequality regard health care not as a privilege reserved for those with wealth and status, but as a human right, which should be available to all. Anything less is pure insanity and, in essence, a crime against humanity. Over 18,000 Americans DIE needlessly each year due to lack of health insurance. This is six times the number who perished on Sept. 11. Who do we hold responsible? The Insurance Thugs, the Drug Pushers, the Doctor Lobbyist, a Weak Congress and our do nothing Commander-in-Chief. What can 78 million baby boomers do about this? Plenty! The ’60’s may be gone, but most of us are still here and the changes we made for Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Privacy Rights (not to mention stopping the Vietnam war) will live in history forever. * We should make sure that all Americans have affordable, continuous and quality health care. * Prescription drugs should be affordable * My husband has CIGNA through his employer. He has diabetes and several of other illness. He had has some problems with the insurance company when the doctor has wrote a prescription for a specific drug. And the insurance company refused to authorize purchase of that prescription. The doctor had to write another prescription. Why would an insurance company question a doctor’s decision of writing a prescription? Has the insurance companies gone to medical school or do an internship? * Our family coverage is $350 monthly. His prescriptions cost an additional $350. If we didn’t have insurance, meds would be over $2,000 a month. We wouldn’t be able to afford the meds. How important is one’s life and the quality of one’s life? United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights which was signed by all members of the general assembly (including the USA) in 1948. The signing of this document was obligatory for every nation which desired to participate and be represented in the world body. Article 25: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. The UN Declaration of Human Rights has been used in over 150 cases in U.S. courts (as of late 2003). The document is not a treaty but a declaration and as such the U.S. Senate was never asked to ratify it. However, the language has become so well known that it has become part of the common law of the U.S., as well as of the world. * Why has the U. S. Senate never been asked to ratify the UN Declaration of Human Rights? Are the rights of American citizens being violated for medical care? Even though – when you go to an emergency room, it clearly says that you can be treated. . . Also the US signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in October 1977. This covenant recognizes "the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Implementation of this covenant includes the creation of conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness. Who gives the right to insurance companies to play God? What gives the right to insurance companies the right to play doctor? When did insurance companies go to medical school and study and learn the Hippocratic Oath? What gives the insurance companies the right to deny an individual the right to affordable, adequate healthcare? Are the insurance companies playing God? You are born. You are a healthy baby. You grow up. You think that you are going to live a long healthy live. Then one day you get sick. Did you choose your illness? Did you decide when you were growing up that you decided that you were going to get cancer? Or you chose to have a heart attack? No! I want to have diabetes. The answer to all of these questions is NO! The illness chose you. Senator Edward Kennedy sums it all up: “Health care is not just another commodity. It is not a gift to be rationed based on the ability to pay. It is time to make universal health insurance a national priority, so that the basic right to health care can become a reality for all Americans.” Healthcare is and should be a human right!