DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM

When Right Wing Sadism Intrudes Into Our Every Day Lives
by Donatra

I will not, under any circumstances, vote for a candidate who does not support a single payer health care program. I have always said this, always believed it, but in the last few days events have unfolded which have brought the health care (and conservative economic policies in general) very close to our front door.

To say that I am disgusted this morning would be an understatement. On Thursday night we learned that a very dear, family friend had been taken to the Emergency Room of a local hospital because a large growth on his right middle toe had begun to bleed. Later we discovered that this was more than just mere bleeding, this was an all out hemorrhage which required immediate care.

Why is this of importance to us? First and foremost, this was the individual who taught my husband that it’s all right to trust people again. Secondly, this is the individual who brought us together, who match made us into an official couple. He was there when we nearly broke up, helping us to reconcile. He was the best man at our wedding, and he is to be our child’s God Father after our baby is born in mid February. Tis person has been with us through thick and thin and we despise both, the way he has been treated by state, federal, and local government. By the same token we despise the right wing and the inhumane policies that it promulgates against the American people.

These are some of the basics. I have no doubt that you are familiar with people such as this yourselves.

Our friend is a Type Two Diabetic. He has been under medical care since May for this condition and his doctor has known about this growth since that time but had shown little interest in it. Prior to this we watched him wasting away to nothing, afraid to obtain additional medical treatment for a new medical condition because he was afraid f the financial repercussions. He had been severely diabetic for some time before he obtained additional ttreatment in May of this year. And to be frank, we’re wondering about past physicians, why they missed the obvious. Willfull neglect because they didn’t want to handle a low income patient? Or gross incompetence? I tend to think of it as moral degeneration on the part of class conscious doctors. Eventually our friend, after much encouragement from another dear friend, obtained help from a social worker and was finally diagnosed with Type II diabetes. The new doctor in the picture knew about the growth which eventually caused so much trouble, but showed little interest in it. As a result the growth continued to expand until recently it began to do so at an accelerated rate. Thursday night was the tipping point when our friend– reluctantly showed, what we had all assumed was a side effect of the diabetes, to another friend. At this point, another voice was added to the chorus of people which was telling him to screw the primary physician and get a second opinion.

Now why, you are asking why would a person not seek a second opinion? Oh Jeez, I don’t know. Do you think it’s because this person is pushing fifty and because he is caught in a low income situation but can’t obtain any kind of state or federal governmental assistance? Do you think maybe this person is caught in a Catch 22 Situation because just about the only people who can get any kind of meaningful health care today are the very elderly and –on occasion–the very young? That maybe the conservative movement in this country is so Socially Darwinistic that it truly believes everyone in the middle should either make it or die without any assistance what-so-ever? Sounds reasonable to me.

To make the situation even worse, we also discovered that the county in which he lives has decided to start foreclosure proceedings on our friends house. While paying for the damned medical costs associated with diabetes and other health problems he fell behind on his property taxes, and now, with a new authoritarian sociopath in the County land Lord’s–ur ah, Treasurer’s–office, large numbers of people are quite literally being thrown out of their houses. How TYPICAL of the Republicans to create a financial climate in which the money that could be used for services for the poor is used to make billionaires out of millionaires.

Now the situation gets even worse. As a result of the tests that were run at the ER on Thursday night and a Doctor’s appointment the next day, out friend learned officially that the growth in question is NOT a diabetic cyst. It is cancer. The doctor told him that the toe will have to be removed, that there is no sense in running a biopsy at the present time, and that they will determine what kind of cancer he is dealing with from the amputated toe. This of course leaves a huge question mark. What comes next? Is our friend terminal? Will he survive? Are we looking at surgery followed by chemotherapy and radiation? We hate the not knowing. And we hate seeing the person who brought us together and who encouraged us to become an “official” couple in both, physical and financial crisis.

My husband keeps asking, “what kind of government denies federal and state financial services to the large number of people between childhood and old age? We both want to know what kind of government forces people to choose between tax payments and health care? Or, for that matter, what kind of local government throws a cancer patient out of the house in which he has lived for the better part of 26 years.

Something has gone very wrong in this society, in a society in which governmental policies destroy human lives based non some half baked economic theories that were discredited in the Victorian Era.

The truth of the matter is that one side of the political spectrum in this country is willing to enforce policies to enforce compassion. And that is the Left. The other talks about compassionate conservative and reveals the term as an oxymoron. And in so doing the far right reveals itself as a collective of self-centered, greedy, authoritarian morons.

We are royally screwed.