July 12, 2017 02:06 PM UTC

A Human Appeal to Republicans; There but for the Grace of God Go I

•  
• by: Michele Patterson

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

While our government condemns the brutality in Syria our Republican leaders in Washington D.C. are preparing to inflict a different type of barbarism on Americans.  Make no mistake, the “Better Care Reconciliation Act,” a tax cut for the wealthy disguised as a healthcare bill, IS barbaric.  It will send our country spiraling back not just 6-8 years in time, but decades.

I want to ask our Republican leaders the following questions:

How can you care so little for the families who, today, rely on Medicaid for their very survival?  How can you be so callous?  Are tax cuts to 400 wealthy families in America truly more important than the thousands of Americans who need Medicaid to live?  Since when does the “good of the few” outweigh the “good of the many?”

Your congressional approval rating is a dismal 21% (according to Gallup) and the approval rating for your “healthcare” bill is even worse, at 17%.  This is clearly NOT what Americans want, why do you continue to push forward?  Does the will of the people no longer matter?

There are people who will die if your bill passes and others whose families will be left destitute because of it.  Where is the humanity in any of this?  Where is your compassion?

And don’t hand me this “personal responsibility” garbage. How is a baby born with a heart defect personally responsible for their health issue?  How is the father, crippled after a drunk driver hits him, personally responsible for his new disabilities?  How is the teen girl, recently diagnosed with MS or the child who has thrice-battled cancer personally responsible for what’s happened to them?  Are they supposed to have saved money for these possibilities? On the continually declining median wage?  On the minimum wage that leaves their families in poverty?

Oh, sure, we can all do our best to be as healthy as we can be but there are always circumstances beyond our control:

– My father had a heart attack at 50 while he was out jogging. Please tell me how he doesn’t deserve medical care?  Was he supposed to see the heart attack coming?

– My youngest child was born two months premature due to an abrupted placenta. How was he personally responsible for this? How was I?

– My youngest also had bacterial pneumonia at age 5, his right lung crushed under a pile of pus. He needed three surgeries and several minor procedures afterward. How was he personally responsible for that?

– My mother had debilitating Rheumatoid Arthritis that left her wheelchair bound and in constant agony the final year of her life. Please. How was that her fault?

My family is lucky.  We’ve almost always had insurance coverage.  However, we did experience long-term unemployment several years ago.  With barely enough money to put food on the table, we had to rely on the CHIP program to insure our three young children.  It was during this time my youngest son contracted bacterial pneumonia.  Government assistance saved his life and I’m grateful for it every time I look at him.

Was his life not worth saving?  Are the lives of thousands of children with various medical issues and/or disabilities not worth saving?  Please tell me, Republicans, which children ARE worth saving?  Could you stand in front of a line of fifty 3-year old babies and choose which of them should live and which of them should die? That is, in essence, what you’re doing with this bill.

Or is it only those who are lucky enough to have wealthy parents who deserve to survive unpredictable illness, disease or disability?

As Republican leaders you claim to be “pro-life.”  You would demand an end to a woman’s right to reproductive choice – not only abortion but access to birth control and basic care through defunding Planned Parenthood, which your bill also does – yet you are ending the mandate that insurance providers cover pre-natal and post-natal care.

Without pre-natal care my youngest child would not be alive today.  Pre-natal care saves the lives of hundreds of babies every year.

If you are willing to let a single person, a single child, a single infant, die simply to give tax cuts to people who don’t need them or to help insurance companies rake in more profit, you are NOT pro-life.  You are anything but.

How do you justify this cruelty to yourselves?  How does someone like Vice-President Mike Pence promote this cold-blooded bill and then sit in the front pew of his church on Sundays as pious as can be?

I’m deeply ashamed of my own state senator, Cory Gardner, who has not only ignored the desperate pleas of the disabled protesters at his office, but gone so far as to have them arrested.  How do you sleep at night, Senator Gardner?  How do you rationalize what you’re doing so you can ease your conscience?

I don’t know what else to say. I’m at a loss. I don’t understand.  Do you really want to kill Americans who happen to be less fortunate than you are?  “There but for the Grace of God go I.”

All I have left is an appeal to your purported Christian values, so I leave you with this:

Matthew 25:35, “I was hungry and you gave me meat: I was thirsty and you gave me drink: I was a stranger and you took me in: 36 Naked, and you clothed me: I was sick and you visited me: I was in prison and you came unto me.”

Matthew 25:40, “Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done unto me.”