You expressed your compassion for people who suffer diseases and injuries but do not get proper medical care because of insufficient money and insurance.  You regretted that people like me are not as fortunate as you.  Thank you for your caring concern.

     You say that you are blessed because you have a job and good health insurance. But you may not be as blessed as you think.

     I worked for years in many different jobs from the time I was a kid. For all those years, I had good heatlh insurance.

     But employer-based health insurance is irrational at best, and a death-trap at worst. Think about it! When do you need heath coverage the MOST? It is when you get seriously injured, or suffer a catastrophic illness, like cancer. But then you can't work anymore, so your insurance runs out. Get the picture? Our system is set up so that as long as you don't have debilitating, life-threatening illness or injury, your employer keeps paying premiums and you think you've got insurance. Insurance of WHAT?

     Insurance that you have coverage as long as you don't desperately need it; but that as soon as you do desperately need it, the coverage is turned into an hour-glass, and when the sands run out, you've got to lose your life savings, your house, your car, maybe your wife (or husband). When that's all gone, if you can't find help or figure something out, you die a terrible, painful death unnecessarily, and/or unnecessarily soon.

     That COBRA. Do you think maybe these people who provided COBRA were laughing when they named it that? For it is a cobra all right. It bites you in your financial neck. You're not working. So again, our system: As long as you are making enough money to afford to pay a self-pay, you don't have to pay. But as your hours are cut, and as your money goes down, you do have to pay. The less money you're making, the more money you have to pay for self-pay. Then, when you have no money coming in at all, and you have made all the sel-pays your insurance allowed, COBRA kicks in, and you have to pay an abominably high sum that you get from God knows where, sacrificing God knows what. Until 18 months later COBRA runs out, and then--if you're still sick or mortally injured--this great society lets you suffer and die.

   In my case, I lost everything. Then, when I couldn't afford the co-pays anymore--which also meant that I could not afford to switch to COBRA--I was rescued, by a friend.

   Several years ago, a friend of mine had a nevous brreak-down and attempted suicide. I brought him into my home. I aranged for him to get therapy and medication. I clothed and fed him. I paid off his car because he had missed so many payments it was about to be re-possessed. I spent hours with him talking to him in an up-building way. Three years later, when he was strong enough, I found a good job for him. Then I found him a good apartment. Finally, he was able to make it on his own.  But we remained good friends.

   When he found out I had gotten cancer and was about to lose my insurance, he told me that he would take care of my insurance for me, for as long as he has his job. I asked him if he was sure he wanted to do this. He said yes. Then I asked him why he wanted to do this. I thought he was going to say something like, "You helped me out financially when I had no money." But instead he said: "You saved my life. Now I'm going to save yours."

   So I was lucky. Some of the good that I did in my life came back to me.

     But so many have not been so lucky. Here in my State, the Hospitals, where cancer patients who had little or no money and no insurance were getting chemotherapy, the oncology center shut down and all these people were sent home--some into the streets--to die horrible deaths, while certain radio and TV talk-show hosts prattle about how long people would have to wait to see a doctor if we had national health care, or single-pay insurance, or national insurance (not the same thing). Our governor refused to raise taxes the small amount that would have beeen needed to save those doomed lives from the hell of untreated cancer.

     Now my luck has just about run out.  My dear friend, whose life I saved years ago, and took care of till he got back on his feet--who then saved my life, and helped me in so many ways--he was diagnosed with cancer too, in July.  His cancer, like mine, is also incurable.  Now he doesn't have an income, either.  I had to go back to being the one who helps the most, by tapping into my savings (my investments were wiped out a while back)--but because of the huge cost of insurance self-pays, my savings are nearing the end.  So both of us also are likely soon going to be nearing the end--not mainly from the cancer--but from our inability to keep the insurance that pays for the costly medical care that keeps us alive.

     Yet in the debates, so little of this kind of reality is touched on, let alone fully described.  Those who oppose government help for people like me and my friend--whether it is government-provided health insurance or directly provided medical care--talk as if all of us already can get all the medical care we need, and choose our own doctors to boot--and that people in the government just want to control us and keep us from getting the doctors we want.  The truth is that many real live human beings will continue to suffer unnecessarily and die unnecessarily, or die needlessly early, if the government doesn't do something to ensure that we get the medical care we desperately need, but cannot get for ourselves.

     Where's the compassion?   Peapod--that's a great question.   Where is the compassion?