From 'Goode News', distributed widely and wildly to newspapers throughout the 5th District. You may look at our congressman's rantings for yourself, starting here.
Prior to this bill's passage, some of us supported an alternative bill that had passed the Senate. The legislation that I voted for supported a mental health parity bill that provided discretion rather than mandates for determining mental disorders to be covered. I do not believe that the federal government should mandate coverage for jet lag, incest, gender identity disorders, pedophilia and the like. This bill failed 196-to-221.
Please keep in touch with me on issues that are important to you. You may write Congressman Virgil Goode, 70 East Court Street, Room 215, Rocky Mount , VA 24151 ; or fax to 1-540-484-1459; or call toll-free to the Danville office, 1-800-535-4008.
Virgil Goode is my Congressman. He does not do anything about issues I think are important. That is a given, just the way things are.
I am dismayed however, at how wrong this is. Not only do those people who suffer from mental illness of one sort or another deserve to be treated, we, as a society, have a duty to help take care of those who are sick and less fortunate than ourselves.
I have a mental illness. While it doesn't rise to the level of the other psychiatric illnesses mentioned above, it is a serious mental illness. I live with it every day.
Depression.
Depression often has associated illnesses that accompany it. Anxiety, lack of interest in life activities, employment problems, and sleep disorders are just a few. Then we could talk about side effects.
But let's not. Congressman Goode would have us believe that those of us, clearly the overwhelming majority, who are not afflicted with the above maladies, should not have parity in insurance coverage because that minority also need treatment. Those in that minority also deserve treatment.
Diseases of the mind, or brain, are just a physiological as a broken arm or gall bladder surgery. Why not treat them that way?
For Mr. Goode to equate the treatment of all people in Virginia with mental illnesses, with a minority of those people with incredibly serious disorders, is unfair and disingenuous at best. For Mr. Goode, most of the time he can't support a bill due to reasons like it spends too much money on something, or that it allows the humane treatment of illegal immigrants (or at least in his head it allows it). When he doesn't support those bills, he lets his district down.
We are in the 21st century, Mr. Goode. We need a new leader that will recognize that sometimes sacrifice of ideas and ideals is necessary to achieve progress for the greater good. We need a Congressman who will take today's problems seriously and help find solutions. I am through fighting the battle of morality and so-called 'values, especially when the values I see expressed by my representative are ones that rightfully belong in the 19th century, not the 21st.
I have a feeling there will be a lot more said about this,and rightfully so.
Permalink | 20 comments