Issues Voting

I don't necessarily want this blog to be a political one, but my readers should know how important access to health care is to me on a personal level. I really think it is a human right, and it makes me so sad to see people not be able to have access to the same medical care that I have simply because they were not born in the right situation. I've been extremely fortunate and I know many aren't as lucky as I have been.

As a teenager looking forward to voting for the first time, I never thought I would be a single-issue voter. As a chronically ill person, I find there is no more critical choice I can make. I also find it silly when other chronically ill people or parents of chronically ill children don't see how important it is to actually understand the issues and how important their votes can be to making sure they continue to have access to adequate medical care.

The current GOP platform with regards to health care is pretty straightforward. Turn everyone to the private insurance industry. Reading between the lines, it also reveals a complete lack of concern for the poor, the disabled, those who do not have personal agency. The current plans would curtail Medicaid, which has been a critical help to parents of sick children. It would make sure that single adults like me would just be totally screwed if they couldn't work. It's not fair. It's not right. But somehow, reducing costs by cutting people out of the health care system seems to make sense to these folks. Whatever happened to compassion?

These people seem to think that charities will spring up to help these people. If that was the case, how come there are so many preventable deaths in this country? The lack of access to health care is not something that most people can even begin to comprehend. If they do, they think it only happens in the third world, not here. There are actually very few options for getting help with insurance, copays, deductibles, etc. Somehow, though, this is supposed to magically materialize once the funding is cut. Many of those with power in the GOP party are very wealthy. I don't see a Romney hospital for the poor, despite the fact that he could certainly afford it.

It irks me to no end that these people claim to have America's best interests at heart, but they can't find it in themselves to care for the "least of these" by providing simple access to health care.