THINK WE CAN .com

 
The woman is stopping people on the beautifully groomed street of upscale shops in Venice Beach, California.  She explains that she needs food to take back to the shelter but her family will be OK real soon.  She looks tired and her clothes are disheveled.  She says she fell on hard times when her husband became ill.  He is feeling better but they lost everything to medical bankruptcy.

Clutching her dress, two small children stand timidly behind her.  The mother continues by saying they will pull through but it will take time to put their lives back together.  She adds that they made it before and they can make it again because both she and her husband are hard workers.  Some people give her money.

A man stands statue-still, stooped over and staring down at the pavement on a corner of Dixie Highway in South Miami.  The temperature is well above 90.  The humidity feels like 110.  Every few minutes hundreds of vehicles pass the motionless figure.  The passengers in the rushing steel monsters give scarcely a glance at the man as they roar by just a few feet away.  In Miami the situation would not be all that strange, except the man is zipped up in a heavy winter parka and wearing a football helmet in the tropical heat.

One car makes a U-turn and winds its way back through traffic and turns on the side road and pulls over to the curb next to the helmeted man.  The driver offers a 20 dollar bill from his window but to his surprise the man’s eyes widen and dart from side to side when he sees the money and he recoils and turns and walks rapidly into the nearby woods and disappears.  Inquiring at a nearby gas station, the driver is told the man is a homeless, combat veteran.
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Those stories are two of the millions more like them that play out every day in America.  And the same fate is a constant threat to 100 million uninsured or under insured Americans.  Every minute of every day, deep down, they know they too may fall prey to the horrific results of a serious illness.

Add to those numbers the estimated 300,000 returning veterans who will not receive the care they need for Traumatic Brain Injuries and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  A Defense Department task force stated that fully one third of all U.S. combat troops are so afflicted.  A massive number of these young people are already homeless and suffering beyond anything most of us can imagine--all because Congress has refused to do anything meaningful for the past 40 years about U.S. health care.

According to a study by the National Coalition of Homeless Veterans, in 2006 there were already 49,000 homeless veterans in California alone.  What is much more frightening is that is just the beginning of a massive epidemic of homelessness of our warriors who have already suffered so much.

Congress is well aware of the ongoing problems caused by our health care system:  They know full well this industry allows over one trillion dollars of health care money to be stolen or wasted yearly; they know that recovering even a small portion of that money could literally solve our entire problem; they know this cancer of an industry will soon consume one fourth of the entire U.S. economy and as a result we all may soon be facing medical bankruptcy.  And yet, the Congress of the United States of America has failed for 40 years to even try to reform the system.

The truth, of course, is that Congress hasn’t had the guts to face up to the incalculable human misery being caused by our privatized health care system and its vast army of money-grubbing lobbyists and media promoters.  Will Congress now allow those worshippers of the almighty dollar to deliver the cruelest blow of all to our damaged and wounded combat warriors?  Will they further brutalize our veterans by denying them necessary medical care to help cure their terrible mental and physical wounds?

Just how many wars must these brave, young people fight?  We send them to far away countries and march them up and down like so many sitting ducks for years at a time.  Congress is also fearful of the draft, so they commit these excellent people to two, three, even four tours of the worst kind of 24/7 combat.  Then if these warriors do manage to return home alive, hundreds of thousands of them battle-scarred mentally and physically, they must fight for health care while they listen to some of our oh-so-clever media.

Imagine what our damaged, homeless veterans must think when they hear the same old drivel day after day—we have all heard the pathetic routines a thousand times—we can’t have health care reform because that would create death camps and socialism and communism and destroy Medicare and the government can’t manage anything and health care will fix itself and let’s wait a bit longer to fix things and etc., etc.

So, what will be our legacy to the excellent men and women who have given so much to protect the fat life so many of us enjoy?   Shall we smile sweetly and mumble prayers for another 40 years as hundreds of thousands of our veterans, with jumbled minds and missing limbs, shuffle off to live in the woods or filthy alleys?

As for the members of the 111th Congress, will they be remembered as the well-insured, self-centered, vote-focused, fat-cats who don’t give a damn about the kids they send off to war?

America, we cannot allow this to happen.  Surely we are not this shallow and narrow-minded.  We cannot become this, for by such a profound lack of courage and morals we shall bear witness to the further decline of our already battered and bruised society.