Ready, really ready for a fight . . . WITH UPDATE

UPDATE:Here's an excellent article by Jonathan Chait on what to expect from SCOTUS just posted on the New York Magazine website.

Are you ready for a showdown?

I am.

It's intolerable and unacceptable to be a citizen of a country which now deems it a necessity to tally death rates for those who lack insurance.

This is why I'm itching for a fight.

I started writing about our tragic, broken and immoral healthcare system, quite by accident in 2005.

I came home, and found a letter that my insurance had been cancelled.  I panicked, I didn't know what to do. So I wrote a diary, My Health Insurance was Cancelled.

And in that very first diary . . .

Is it too much to expect that in America in 2005, we have the right to affordable health care, affordable insurance and to select health care providers of our own choosing? All I can believe is that the insurance company is not making enough money on me.

 . . .Healthcare and health insurance should not be a luxury or a privilege, it should be a right afforded to all Americans.

I feel like the politicians, Republicans, Democrats, all of them, want me to die or leave the country.  I do not know what to do or what to think. I want to just give up.

We are spiraling out of control in this country, my friends.

 . . .I feel totally alienated from this country.  Why, would someone please tell me, why do we allow this shameful situation to go on and on and on?

 . . .People, we are on our own, make no mistake, we are on our own.  Our government and our leaders have let us down.

We must not accept this grotesque status quo any longer.

Things are as bad today as they were in 2005. The Kaiser Foundation is reporting staggering rate increases.

People who buy their own health insurance report the most recent rate increase requests have averaged 20 percent, according to the survey released Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (KHN is a part of the foundation.)

Then in 2005, I wrote a second diary, Finding Health Insurance Has Become My Full Time Job. Daily Kos was the place I came for advice, and to hear from others being brutalized by this toxic and deadly system.

Allow me to digress for a moment, I'd like you to know something  that will break your heart and make you angry. My insurance agent told me yesterday that several of her clients who have been cancelled, just like me, were in the middle of medical ordeals. She told me one client was undergoing chemotherapy for a malignancy, another recently had a transplant and requires medication that costs $1000.00 a month. Replacing their insurance with a satisfactory alternative will not be easy, it may be impossible.

. . .Several people commented on other diaries that this situation is exactly what to expect when you relegate the collective health of the nation to a parasitic industry that must demonstrate a strong bottom line to its shareholders. The insurance industry must show strong quarterly profits and the only way they can do this is to deny care, terminate enrollees, send them to Mexico for care, restrict access to vital medication, the list goes on and on. It stinks.  Why do we accept this?

It's grievous, it is immoral, it's criminal that so little has changed since 2005.

Our U.S. healthcare outcomes are shocking.

We spend way, way more than any other industrialized nation, and we throw 50 million of our fellow citizens in a ditch filled with campaign contributions to rot and die.

We lose 26,000 Americans every year, because they don't have insurance.

And what becomes of those ACA high risk pools which are now covering 62,000 Americans if SCOTUS kicks us in the face?  

It is also unclear what, if any, accommodations might be made for the nearly 62,000 people enrolled in special high-risk pools created by the law to cover those unable to buy insurance because of a pre-existing illness.

"I have no idea what I would do," says Haley White, a 22-year-old in Wauconda, Ill., who had Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a teenager and lost her coverage when her father was laid off. "No one will insure me because of my health history."

And Mr. Boehner has to tell the sick motherfuckers not to celebrate if the SCOTUS dumps the law in the toilet.

So, let's review, if only for historians, Amerika 2012.

More death. Check

More needless suffering. Check

More financial ruin. Check

It's been seven long years and no one has answered my question, so I'll ask again, why do we accept this.

This time, we're going to fight back. Our lives depend on it.

In New York, on the day of the SCOTUS ruling, there will be a large demonstration in Union Square. Please be there.

ACTION ALERT!

RALLY TO RESPOND:

Will the Supreme Court Affirm Health Care as a Right?

5:30 p.m. on the day the Court ruling is released

Union Sq. in Manhattan

(SE corner across from Phillips Ambulatory Care Center)

Invited speakers:

·        Local members of Congress

·        Legal experts

·        Local state legislators

·        Doctors and nurses

·        Local advocates

·        New Yorkers already helped by the Affordable Care Act

·        New Yorkers expecting help down the road by the Affordable Care Act

More information at HCFANY

BE THERE ..to celebrate a good ruling, or condemn a bad one!