Healthcare Reform

The following letter was sent to Senators Susan Collins, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe and Ron Wyden. If any of them respond, I'll post their response on here as well.


Dear Senators:

I am writing to the six of you in regards to the letter you all signed urging a slow down in the time-line on the issue of healthcare for all Americans. While I agree with you that this matter is extremely urgent and must be done right, I have to disagree with you on the need for slowing down the process.

Earlier this week a friend of mine asked me to accompany him to a local emergency room. My friend was experiencing chest pains severe enough to warrant being seen by a medical professional. Unfortunately, like many other Americans, my friend does not have health insurance, and therefore we were forced to go to the local county hospital. Before being seen by a physician, we sat in the waiting room for over 16 hours. From speaking with other patients who had been to this emergency room, and from the staff of the hospital, we found that such a wait was not uncommon.
If my friend had been fortunate enough to have health insurance, he could have gone to another hospital where the wait time would have been under an hour. The lack of insurance necessitated going where he would be able to afford to pay the bill. It was only two days after this experience that I read of your letter to the Senate.

I am surprised that any of you would ask for additional time for this measure, given that all of you have been in office long enough to have had time to prepare for this. In fact, other than Al Franken, I don't think anyone in the Senate should require additional time to get this legislation passed. Joe Lieberman has been in the Senate since 1988, Olympia Snowe since 1994, Susan Collins, Mary Landrieu and Ron Wyden since 1996 and Ben Nelson since 2004. All of you have had sufficient time to prepare for passage of this legislation, but apparently, none of you have bothered to do this until it was forced upon you.

I would ask all of you to put your money where your mouths are. If you want additional time on this matter, then show the American people that you are serious about passage of this legislation. Cancel your own medical insurance for you and your covered family members until this measure is passed into law. Should you or any of your covered love ones experience an illness during that time, I can give you directions to the county hospital where I sat for nearly a full day.

After you have experienced sitting with an ill loved one for that long, then tell me that we should slow down the time-line for passage of this legislation. Until then, show some respect for the many Americans who currently do not have health insurance and get this measure passed.