Rant From My Sick Bed

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This year, my retired mother has earned the title of Master Gardner from OSU.  She enjoys keeping her lawn and garden up to snuff, and is actually quite skilled at it.  Being on the cusp of autumn last Saturday (September 22), I accompanied her to a local nursery  to pick out some; pumpkins, corn stalks, mums, etc...; to give her lawn the feeling of fall.

Upon entering the plant based business we found ourselves amidst a virtual winter wonder land.  A sweeping array of crystal ornaments hung majestically from snow flocked trees as replicas of snowflakes, churches, reindeer and other Christmas icons adorned the room.

I was pretty disgusted by the whole display.   Don't misunderstand, I'm not someone who'd deny Bob Cratchet an extra piece of coal to stay warm.   No, no, no, Dickens wasn't writing about me; I love Christmas.  I simply found the earliness of the display to be extremely tacky, to the point of crassness.

I told myself right then and there that I was going to do a blog on the extended commercialization of the season.  I was going to point out that the autumn items we'd actually come for were way in the back of the nursery.  I was going to research and compare Christmas shopping seasons from year to year.  That blog didn't happen.

On the evening of my shopping trip, I was flossing and the floss slipped a bit between two of my lower teeth.  I thought little of it and went to bed.  By morning, my bottom gum was crimson, black, and blue with infection.  My gum hurt.  My teeth hurt.  My head throbbed.  I was literally living on soup, mashed potatoes, and pudding because I couldn't chew without searing  pain.  I found my, otherwise active, self reduced to napping and watching TV in between doses of Percogesic.

Fortunately, I have very good  health insurance thru the State of Oregon, and by Tuesday I had a filled prescription for Amoxicillin from my dentist.  The pills are helping, slowly but surely, and I should be back on solid food by Monday.

While I was battling my ailment though, I wondered what I would've done if I'd not been covered.  Then I remembered Mitt Romney's statement, "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it...."

Granted, nowhere in the constitution is the right to health care guaranteed.  Yet, in a day when we can communicate with anyone in the civilized world within minutes and send robots to Mars, surely providing health care for its citizens should be a basic function of our government.  What else does "provide for the general welfare mean," if not that?   Without such coverage, I would still be in agony, lacking the energy to type this or preform any other productive task.

Even though millions of American men, women, & children currently suffer without such coverage, Mitt Romney, if elected President, has vowed to repeal Obamacare, the law which will cover as many as 30 million uninsured Americans by 2014.  Whether or not he CAN realistically repeal the law on his first day in office is beside the point.  The fact that he wants to take promised coverage away from awaiting recipients is a frightening thought which I hope will decide the election for most voters.
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