This Is No Reform | The Source Weekly - Bend, Oregon

This Is No Reform

Letter to the editor

President Obama and the Members of the United States Congress,

Please save the eloquent speeches for those in your own small choir. Please do not continue to insult the intelligence of your fellow citizens. No matter how you all try to dress it up, you have sold us, and the hope of having affordable and accessible health care, down the road. That Dennis Kucinich and his request for a single payer, cover everyone, plan was not the plan considered shows that the true color of the Democratic and Republican parties is GREEN. Sorry, no offense meant to the "green party."

No history has been made. No matter how many times you repeat it to try and make this fallacy a fact. We now have a piece of legislation that is a gift to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies and to the Right to Life lobby. As a female citizen, I may be required to buy health insurance, the quality of which there has been no guarantee. What this bill does guarantee is to restrict my right to oversee my own body, my reproductive rights, my ability to decide just how I want to manage my health and wellbeing. This restriction will extend to every female in our country, save the wealthy because their expensive private insurance will not be affected.

Though if their doctor or nurse takes a stand based on their own conscience, they may not be able to get service either. This move is tantamount to taxation without representation. If a government believes and institutes laws that restrict our control over our own bodies and lives then our constitutional right to vote and be a full citizen has been nullified. The idea that a free and democratic government has the right to control the reproductive status of its female population - is no free and democratic government. For any religious organization to manipulate our government's legislative proceedings is a violation, in letter and intent, of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

If we truly want to make history, then Congress needs to turn over this decision process to the people - you need to hear our voices and not just in staged town halls. I venture to wage that almost 100 percent of Congress and the executive branch are very wealthy people. None of you have the slightest idea of just how broken our health care system is. You have now and have had excellent coverage - that which your money can buy. You want creative and real solutions? Then bring people to the table that have had to figure out how to squeeze every last dime to make ends meet to pay for their healthcare and housing and food and education and transportation and savings and retirement. The wealthy think they can just throw more money or more warfare to solve a problem. Send in the proletariat to fight our wars, serve our food and pump our gas.

The "free market" politicians and citizens alike throw that phrase around like it held the same physical property as gravity. As if the hundreds of thousands of our countrymen that have served or died in war did so to save the "free market" as opposed to the freedom of speech. Those that espouse that the free market takes precedence over compassion for your fellow countrymen - fine keep singing your song, but please do not make the rest of us listen to your "family values" speak any longer. Because you don't treat your family very well.

Most Sincerely,

Tracy Miller, Bend

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