By Cady Stanton
I make the following modest proposal so that we might have an honest, sincere discussion in Washington over health care: Before you, members of the House and the Senate, consider anything, repeal your own benefits. It is indeed cliche to say it, but you must walk a mile in our shoes; you must understand what it’s like to buy an individual policy for a healthy individual, while the person with a history of diabetes is priced out of the market or denied altogether. You must understand what it’s like to choose between your prescription and food for your family. You must feel the sacrifice of a foregone medial appointment because you lack the funds to pay the doctor.
At the risk of going too far with the simile, you all are, right now, like King George. Our tax dollars take good care of you while you prepare your sound bites and talking points that the rest of us are to accept as debate, with millions of us uninsured or without adequate insurance. How can any of you even begin to engage in honest debate over a serious public issue when you are removed from its consequences? Most of us “little people” see nothing but a partisan fight. We see you all engaging in gamesmanship with our lives.
Do the right thing. Take the moral stand. Give up your generous benefits before you dare to speak to any of us, before you act on our behalves.
I dare our elected officials to try it. Then I’d like to see how the debate shapes up!
After I sent this, I found I’d been bettered by Digby (not a difficult feat):
“So this man [former Rep. Tom Davis] who makes six figures and is covered for every hangnail until he dies is telling this woman that she needs to find a large employer who will hire a 62 year woman and then keep working (on her feet — that’s what retail usually is) for much longer than she hoped to. Sure, that’s doable. It’s just a matter of finding the right job after all, and who can’t do that? After all the two of them are in the same boat — the coiffed congressman who would like to retire at 62 but lost a bunch of his portfolio in the crash and this 62 year old shop clerk who’s been working at menial, backbreaking labor her whole life. Hey, he found a job with a large employer who covers him (the federal government) why shouldn’t she? He just can’t figure out why she can’t find a plan to cover her like he has … A public servant telling some 62 year old retail clerk that she needs to stop bellyaching and find a job with a big employer so she can get health care is so ‘let them eat cake’ that I can hardly believe he said it.”
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/let-them-eat-fancy-feast-by-digby-think.html