Published: October 25, 2009 09:50 pm      

How can she be too small for health care?

I read in the news that another child was turned down for insurance in Colorado, this time because she was too small. She’s a perfectly healthy 2-year-old who weighs only 22 pounds, and only ever had one cold.

Still, she doesn’t fit the insurance industries standard for height and weight, so she doesn’t qualify. The poor little girl suffers only from genetics that make her a smaller than other children her age, and an insurance industry run amuck with greed.

Do you think she should be turned down for this reason? Do you think she should be turned down for any reason? No? You wouldn’t know it by some of the letters I’ve read in this paper recently. I read where some want to “take our country back.”

Where do you want to take it to, the previous eight years, when greed and uncaring ran through the halls of the White House and Washington in general? Do you want to keep the status quo and let the insurance industry not be regulated and be allowed to turn anyone down for any reason, not matter how ridiculous?

I’ve heard it before, “it’s the way a free market works and it’s the American way.” Whatever, it’s the same old story with the right wing. Let’s let the rich get richer and to hell with the poor and the middle class. “Let’s let trickle down economics do its thing.” ’m still waiting, and I suspect a lot of others are as well.

Now is the time for health care reform, but the insurance industry doesn’t want any such thing. The lies that have been perpetrated from the right wing to fight health care reform are ridiculous and shameful.

The lie about death panels, started by Sarah Palin, is the worst. Do you really think that any American, on the right or on the left, would actually propose setting up a panel to judge whether a person should live or died when they get to a certain age? Can you actually picture any American sitting there doing that?

That lie came from twisting the facts in the case, which got started at Gundersen Lutheran hospital in LaCrosse, Wis.

They have lobbied their elected officials for years to propose a “right to die” amendment. They are pioneers in ensuring that care provided for patients in their final months comply with the patients’ wishes. They wanted to have Medicare compensate physicians for advising patients on end-of-life planning. Sounds logical to me, so I’m still wondering how that got twisted to a death panel.

The bottom line is if you have health care, good for you. I have it and I’m grateful, but what about the millions of people who don’t, or those get turned down like the little girl in Colorado, or the poor? Should they be turned down or suffer because they are poor or don’t fit the insurance industries standards?

I’ve read letters from those who get Medicare and Social Security (“Social,” as in “socialist” for all of you right wingers), but don’t turn them down because they say they deserve them since they served in the military or worked hard all their lives.

That might be true, but does that mean children don’t deserve health care because they haven’t contributed enough to society yet? Should a poor person be denied treatment because they are poor and don’t deserve to get well?

Try putting the human element in you thoughts for once instead of dollar signs or your own personal selfishness; you might be surprised at what you see.

Leon Neff

LaVale