How Dare You, George Bush

This post is a comment I wrote on Dailykos, in response to a Diary lamenting the lack of dental insurance coverage. It will make more sense in that context, and the title link of this post goes to that diary. I wrote this comment hastily, but from the heart, and thought I would reproduce it here.

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I was dealing with a critically important issue exactly on point on the phone, and brought up Dailykos to glance at, and saw this diary.

My adult stepson is on kidney dialysis. He lost his kidneys before I knew him as a young child. My wife donated a kidney to him at that time, which his body eventually rejected. He received another transplant (what is known as a "cadaver kidney" when he was twelve, but that didn't last either. He is in his 20s now. He has Medicare, Medicaid, and my private insurance.

His teeth have been deteriorating for years, for reasons obviously related to his medical situation and the countless drugs he has been given. But as they discolored and became smaller and smaller, we were repeatedly told that his dental problems were "cosmetic" and not covered. We always knew full well that this was not cosmetic, and that in the long run, would cost the government and private insurance more than simply doing the right thing.
Now he is on the list for his third transplant, and his front teeth simply broke in half. If a transplant came available today, the doctors would likely refuse to do it because of the current state of his teeth. Now we are working on various ways to get medical to cover it, such as having renal docs write letters that the dental work is "medically necessary" for his transplant, which is so obviously true.

My stepson should not have to worry about losing his transplant because of an insurance company's CEO's salary, or because the federal programs are run by people who only see short term costs, not long term ones.

It is long past time to simply do away with all private health insurance. Enough people are already dying because of the profit motive, say, in Iraq for example. But to die because corporate profits are more important than someone's life is, simply, evil.

As long as I'm venting and ranting here, I wish to bash Dick Cheney a little. That SOB is a "starve the beaster" when it comes to government programs like Medicare and Medicaid; he doesn't want to legislate them out of existence, he would simply prefer to defund them and let them die on the vine, as I recall that process being described.

He would prefer that human beings like my stepson die rather than fork out the few dollars he pays a year as his contribution to those programs. While my taxes pay for his heart procedures.

Dick, George, and all the rest of you with power who cynically manipulate the religious beliefs of others, I have only one thing to say: you'd better hope there is no hell.

Further in my rant, why is it that these rich bastards are the ones complaining the loudest about their taxes? Has George Bush ever had to worry about anything, and I mean really worry, about anything in his life? Does George or Dick worry that they won't be able to pay their mortgages because of their taxes? Are they running out of food? Are they living paycheck to paycheck, or are they just constantly angry about taxes because they want to be more obscenely rich than they already are?

George, I know the reality of some experiences that you do not, as do many reading and posting here. It is the kind of moment that parents, especially, or anyone with responsibility for another human being knows. It is the kind of moment that you hide from your children, and sometimes even your spouse. It is a moment of feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, and even like a failure, as you do your best, get up and go to work day after day, where most of us, by the way, are treated like crap. It is when the reality of your your personal, financial, professional and human obligations seem to vastly, vastly outweigh your corresponding assets. And often, those realities are real, where even those of us with graduate degrees and careers have 15 year old unreliable cars that we can afford to fix no more than we can afford to fix the things breaking in the houses we can't really afford anymore. Homelessness and failing our children forces itself into our minds, and we go and find a spot somewhere, alone.
We sit, George, and we slump and feel bone chilling stress, worry, no, call that dread, not worry. And we hold our head in our hands and under our breath, we ask ourselves, or God, or fate, or just the air right there -

What am I going to do?

That quietly uttered question, as we cover our faces in our hands for a moment, is genuine and painful, because we don't know the answer.

What will happen to my children if something happens to me?

What if I can't pay the mortgage next month?

What if my gas is disconnected?

What happens to my family if I lose my job? Or if I don't have one, and can't find one?

What am I going to do?

It doesn't count, George, if you have seen George Bailey have that moment in Its a Wonderful Life.

But that leads to another moment, George and Dick, and that is that somehow, after that moment, we summon all our courage, all of our wonderful human resilience and we pull ourselves together and stand up straight. We do that because we know that falling apart will only make everything worse. We have to hold ourselves together.

Then we walk back into the rooms where our wives or husbands or children are, and walk confidently and in a million little non-verbal, and verbal ways, let our families know that of course everything will be all right. Even as we fight panic inside.

I don't think you have had those moments, George and Dick. And how dare you judge, feel indifference towards, or deliberately foster distrust or divisiveness among those of us who have.

No, you have not had those moments.

And I'm thinking that no one should be ever again be elected President of this country unless they have.