Healthcare Crisis Tears at Fabric of Holiday Traditions

Our elected officials in Washington, DC, are rushing to
finish their work and get home for the holidays. Many of the people who
elected them aren't so richly blessed. Millions and millions of
Americans do not get the Norman Rockwell holiday scene played out in their
lives because millions and millions of people have been left financially and
physically broken and battered by the healthcare crisis.

For decades our elected officials have known of our
plight. For decades they have shrugged their shoulders, packed their bags
for their homes and the holidays, and left the work of fixing this system
undone.

Don't wish us a happy holiday season ladies and
gentlemen. Don't you dare. On my nickel, on my dollar, on the
salary and the benefits I provide for you and your family, you will enjoy a
measure of wealth I cannot attain. So don't wish me things that I
cannot ever enjoy again.

This year the situation is more troubling by
many-fold. My husband received his Social Security year-end statement
that said he would not be getting any cost-of-living increase this year on the
same day that the major news outlets reported record Wall Street firm earnings
and CEO bonuses. You don't seriously want us to believe you care
about our well-being, do you?

When our at-first slow, but then more insistent financial
decline began nearly 20 years ago, we saw a gradual but equally troubling
decline in the numbers of folks who wanted to spend much time with us. It
just simply isn't much fun to be with a family in decline. Aside
from the physical and health woes, it's a real downer to watch folks
getter poorer and poorer and losing their worldly goods and security.

It's uncomfortable to see disconnect notices from
utility companies, collection letters and final notice billings from doctors
and hospitals. It's much nicer to see Christmas cards and gift
cards and packages under the tree.

But for millions of people in this country, the holidays are
not the time of joy depicted so openly on commercial television or in
advertising everywhere you look. For millions of us, the holidays are
reminders that we live in a selfish and cruel society where survival of the
fittest is worshiped by the ruling class -- and that ruling class includes
those in our elected government bodies who relied on us for their means to
riches and the security we cannot embrace for ourselves.

For millions of us, the holidays mean our grown children
will go where the money and the stability are and they will take the
grandchildren there for the picture-perfect events. Spending time with
the grandparents in the struggle for healthcare justice is not a fun or
inviting way to welcome Joyeux Noel.

Robbed of security, robbed of our dignity, still struggling
for healthcare justice and broke beyond what we ever would have dreamed,
millions of Americans have lost the ability to recreate the holidays we knew as
children because we were unlucky enough to get sick while
"insured."

And this Congress and this President really do not care if
millions more of us suffer the same fate. They want to hurry the work of
reform -- insurance mandates -- so that they can enjoy the holidays
we have afforded them. They do not care that we suffer -- they care
that they stay in power and claim some hollow victory while we wait for the day
that never comes to claim our share of the dream.

I sometimes hate the holidays now. I hate the
arrogance of those who think it is their hard work -- and somehow my lack
thereof -- that makes them more worthy.

But most of all, I wanted this Congress and this President to
care and to work hard to make sure my future offered dignity and honor for the
struggle of millions who cannot achieve what they have been freely given from
my labors. My work gave you comfort. My work gave you
holidays. And all you can give me is a lukewarm nod to some health reform
measure that makes you richer and broadens the control of health insurance
giants over my life? Sad.

I wanted and still want healthcare for all -- me, you,
my neighbors, my friends. All. Everybody in, nobody out.

And I am not excluding the Republicans from blame
here. Quite the contrary. They have lied to the American people and
said they care about those on Medicare. What they really care about is
the votes of those on Medicare. Beyond that they hate Medicare as one of
those evil "government run" healthcare plans they so abhor.
Make no mistake about it, when it was time to hear a Medicare for all type
reform, Republicans and most Democrats wanted nothing more to do with it.
Republicans didn't care if the entire Medicare program was gutted so long
as they used the perceived "cuts" to the program as sound bite
fodder.

This healthcare reform effort in the U.S. Congress has been
a disgusting display of the rich protecting the interests of the rich.
And all at my expense, quite literally.

What I know for certain is that this Christmas, my family
won't come where I am. I am a nomad created by the healthcare
crisis. I am not a mom or a grand mom who has a place and a comfortable
station in life to offer. So, the kids and the grands go where they can
be wrapped in a real American-style holiday. And I lost that a long time
ago when the health insurance crisis and the health insurance industry
destroyed any sense of stability I could offer. I will work hard the rest
of my life and under whatever mess of a reform plan they pass this time around
just to stay alive.

I will work to just stay afloat and to buy the insurance I
will be forced to purchase when I would far rather pay taxes for the healthcare
I need under a real reform plan.

And happy holidays to all of my elected officials. I
truly hope you never know what I know this Christmas.