Forgive Us and Help Us

Below is my reply to a friend who is obsessed with the fear that a health care plan run by the government will result in a Socialist state and other distractions and fears being planted by mis-information being spread by insurance companies and their lackeys.
You know recently I had to be hospitalized and like you was horrified at the bill. I could have stayed at the Plaza in New York for less. LOL. Unfortunately, I had to meet our deductible and out of pocket levels first, so my bill was a great deal more than yours. As far as the State Health Plan goes, it is far less than the plan I had before retiring from The Post and Courier but it is all we can afford. In South Carolina there are a lot of retired military men and woman and I don't think they realize what it is like for those of us who don't have that insurance or health system to fall back on. However I am like the majority of Americans and when retirement, unemployment etc. hits we are out of luck. When Mary retires, frankly, I don't know what we will do for insurance. I guess we just won't get sick.
Like you I am vehemently against a totally socialist health care system and I might point out that in Britain where the majority of my relatives still live, you still have a choice, if you have the money to pay for independent health care insurance. Some do (my better off relatives) and some don't and have the government run health plan and having just lost my Aunt Dorrie and knowing her experience with the government plan, she had no problems. She died and in talking with surviving relatives I do know that no test was ever denied and every avenue to help her was pursued up to the time of her death. She was 88 years old and until her heart started failing her she was a vibrant, involved deaconess in The Church of Ireland. It is because of her experience and that of my grandmother who died years ago that I don't have the same fears that some in this country do about a government plan. Nor do I fear that it will bring about socialism as it has not not done so in all the many European countries that offer some version of a government health plan option. Cold war ideas and fears don't apply here as far as I am concerned. As the generations of people that were born after World War II come into retirement age as I have, there will be more and more elderly citizens with no insurance because they simply cannot afford it. Medicare helps but it is nowhere near enough to foot the entire bill if a retiree becomes seriously ill.
Anyway bottom-line, it is not that I am totally in favor of the present healthcare plan being offered but rather it is that some kind of plan is direly needed or we, the aging are going to be abandoned and left with no insurance and all because this country is so obsessed with whether their political party is right or wrong and whether this issue can be used too get back into power. Both parties are totally guilty of this and it is this type of inaction over this issue and many others that has been going on for years. This is one of many reasons why I abandoned the Republican Party last year and decided to vote independently for someone, anyone, who would try to move forward and not stay with the status quo which if we stay in will result in the neglect, the abandonment and the death of millions of the elderly, uninsured and yes unemployed. I remember well how long it took as college graduates for both my daughters to find jobs that actually had benefits and health insurance. Theirs is an experience that millions of parents know about and have experienced, yet we equivocate until once again nothing will be done and the executives of the insurance companies sit and rub their hands with glee. Happiness because I and millions of others can die uninsured for all they care because really isn't life all about a free market?
And perhaps the greatest disgrace and it saddens me to the point of tears of frustration is that so many of us who are blessed with jobs and have insurance look down the ladder of life and say, "screw you" and kick those under us in the face until they drop off to their eventual deaths. It enrages me that some would hold up the cross or the flag and call this plan a plot of the devil and the eventual apocalypse for everything Christian and American.
Please, God, take their hearts and remind them of your words, "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." "For I was hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in." Read the book of Matthew in the New Testament and Jesus speaks very clearly to us about how he wants us to treat those less fortunate than ourselves. I find that the apostle Matthew was best at telling us the story of Jesus's message of love.
God forgive them and God help us.