WHY DID I WRITE THE BILL MOYER'S JOURNAL POEM? below

To be true to myself I had to write it. The power of the truth of people being allowed to die because of not being able to access health care is criminal. The power of truth out of my heart and mind had to be allowed out into the fresh air. For a number of weeks I have been pondering in my mind and heart the reality of the truth in the United States that we say it is OK to allow people, without health insurance because of a lack of money or an insurance company defined pre-existing condition, to die a miserable death. In the land of the free, home of the brave this is unconscionable.

The day after I wrote this poem I met a writer friend who fell, badly injured her self with bandages up and down her right leg. I asked about a possible fracture. Having lost her job last spring she is without money and health insurance. The result is no access to health care. If there is a break in her leg that is not medically cared for, the result for this forty something woman could be life long mobility problems.

These calamities did not have to happen if we were not so politically self centered and self righteous without compassion. We forget that we too could be this woman and many other people so afflicted. We have the human power to change and make a difference.

All world wide leading countries believe it is a human right to have health care. This human right is not recognized as the truth in the United States. When will the UN Human Rights Commission focus on our sins of permitting the crippling of peoples' lives and death by no health insurance to grow greater day by day?

I invite you to join the growing crowd calling for affordable and accessible equality of health care for all people to be a human right in the United States.

Here are some links to the lack of health care problem and to a new book that holds great hope for us to change. I invite you to join the growing crowd calling for affordable and accessible equality of health care for all people to be a human right in the United States.

Bill Moyer's Journal August 21, 2009 http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html

Medical doctor suffering because of lack of health insurance
http://www.truthout.org/082309Z?n

NPR FRESH AIR August 24, 2009 discussion with award winning author T. R. Reid of his new book released on August 20, 2009: The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care http://www.npr.org/templates/story
/story.php?storyId=112172939#commentBlock

One source to purchase Reid's book: http://www.amazon.com/Healing-America-Global-Better-Cheaper/dp/1594202346/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251196826&sr=1-1

BILL MOYER'S JOURNAL
August 21, 2009

Good people with no health insurance
is it two --no, three, no more
doomed to die
From a dreadful disease called dollar-less.

One man survives and grows,
Treated by generous compassionate
Goodness of orthopedic surgeons,
right people, right time.

Now with a pre-existing history,
No health insurance accessible for hew health problem.
What if a public option
was a realistic choice at the Dollar Store?

Test could be done
Treatments could happen
He, too young, would not face
Death's probability before year's end.

Dollars, lots of them,
you live.
Dollars few of them,
you die.

Equality's story
in the richest country in the world
in the history of human kind
Honors health care rationing.

This dishonest country
Ruled by greed, not compassion
Driven by anger, shouting, screaming, rage,
Overflowing with distrust, disgust, deceit.

Who will fight this civil war
to save the land of the free,
the home of brave, honest
souls needing health care to relish life?

No money, no health insurance
they die, one by one,
each year from the dreadful dollar-less disease.
Eighteen thousand U.S.citizens, at least, each year.

Copyright Mary Elizabeth McIlvane 2009