But the moment I was born, I stopped. It’s kind of hard to dream when you don’t have enough to eat. Apparently my mom is supposed to “pull herself up by her bootstraps,” and find a way to provide for me, but she’s dead broke because she can’t get childcare subsidy and without childcare she can’t hold down a job. And nothing kills dreams quite like being sick and not getting the care you need. My mother can’t afford health insurance for me and so we have to make do the best we can. You would assume that a state like Washington would be willing to help out a kid with no health insurance. As commentator Michelle Malkin put it (while telling 11-year-old Marcelas Owens why it was his mother’s fault that she died without insurance) “Washington State offers a plethora of existing government assistance programs to laid-off and unemployed workers like Marcelas' mom.” Unfortunately these programs are being whittled away by budget crises. I guess preventative care is for those who are better off than we are. Mom doesn’t have health insurance either. She worries about what would happen to me if she were to get sick and not be able to take care of me. I worry about that too.
You know what the funny thing is? It’s some of the same people who want so badly for me to be born that think my mother and I don’t deserve to have health care. Like John McCain, for instance, who once said “As a leader of a pro-life party with a pro-life position, I will persuade young Americans [to] understand the importance of the preservation of the rights of the unborn. “ A few years later he voted against the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization and Expansion Act. In fact, every single no vote for the bill came from a member of his supposedly “pro-life” party. Makes a person wonder what the term “pro-life” really means.
Then there’s the fact that John Boehner, current Republican Speaker of the House, has listed the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act,” as his top priority. The bill would restrict funding for abortions to an unprecedented degree and bar a woman from using her own money to pay for insurance with comprehensive reproductive health care. Yet, he also voted against the expansion of CHIP in 2009, not to mention that his infamous “Repeal of the “job-killing” health care act” would harm children in many ways.
17,000 kids have died in the U.S. due to a lack of health insurance in the last two decades. 10 million die world-wide from lack of care each year . 17 million American children didn’t have enough food to eat this year.
Where are the billboards about that?
Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone cared a whole bunch about me – and other children like me– for more than just nine months?
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