To the Editor;
Brain cancer. Organ transplant. Heart Disease, Asthma.
These represent just a few of the health issues many of our friends and colleagues have dealt with in the last year. Many of you likely have a list of your own. Some of us have lost loved ones to sickness, while others have struggled to make ends meet, while they battled for their lives.
No one asked to be sick. It’s often thrust upon us — even when we’re trying to prevent it. It could happen to anyone. That’s the one truth about sickness and disease: It’s blind to the contents of our wallet; it doesn’t have a plan.
These truths make it even more discouraging that our U.S. representative, Mr. Erik Paulsen, supported and voted for the American Health Care Act last week.
Listen, we understand this is the first of many steps before this becomes actual law, and we’re a long way off yet. But we can’t ignore Rep. Paulsen abandoning the portion of his constituency that needs him the most — the sick. We’ve all likely learned since childhood, you help the poor and the sick. They have it hard enough. You don’t kick them when they’re down. So we have to ask: Why would our representative vote for a bill that so easily destroys healthcare opportunities for the sick?
Was it to give a huge tax cut to the rich? Did he just want to destroy something President Barack Obama created? Does he have something against women’s healthcare rights? Or was it to save every taxpayer a quick $5? It can’t be about things as petty as these, can it?
I can’t support a representative who can so easily vote for a law that would destroy so many lives and the families around them, simply for a political or party victory.
Over 24 million people are drastically affected by this bill. It’s a bill every healthcare organization in the country has called destructive; a bill that required the very politicians to save their own healthcare. And our representative voted for it. He didn’t even abstain.
He protected his interests, while destroying others. Healthcare is so much bigger than plitics, Mr. Paulsen. This isn’t a blue versus red issue. For some of us, it’s life or death.
Obviously for Erik Paulsen it isn’t. At least not yet. But come 2018, we’ll see. WHen his political career needs life-saving surgery, how will we vote?
Tracy Leggett*, Chaska
Chaska Herald, May 11, 2017
* Tracy Legget is Chaska Area Indvivisible CD3 Chair