We were in Kingman, Arizona, spending the night on the way back to PLANET Utah after a successful house hunting trip to Tucson, Arizona. My wife asked me if I had any blank CDs. Since she was going to drive the next day, I assumed she was going to burn a new road mix. I had brought some blank CDs and I gave her one. I was thinking about what I had seen near the Fashion Place mall in Scottsdale earlier in the day. More after the jump.
When we started our trip back to PLANET Utah Saturday morning, my wife put in the new road mix and I was surprised because it was my road mix. Then five or six songs in, here was her new song: Here Comes the Sun.
Little darling, it’s been a long and cold winter.
I can’t imagine what it is like for the Americans that don’t have health insurance but it must feel like a dreadful winter. Unable to get warm, worrying every moment what disaster will strike next. After I graduated high school, I spent a few years working dead-end jobs with no health insurance. Unemployment was only about 6% but the future didn’t look too bright so I joined the military. Best decision I ever made. TRICARE is probably more important than my retirement pay.
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Today we have a chance to do more for Americans than anything else in my lifetime.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
While this bill doesn’t do everything I want it to do. The sun is rising for 32 million uninsured Americans. We’ve read their stories and my words are insufficient to explain why the "shining light on the hill" has let the health of its people wither in the cold of winter.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all right.
It’s more than all right. It is a new beginning and I couldn’t help but smiling thinking what an apt metaphor for what was happening with HCR than this song.
The scene that I was thinking about on Friday night, was Teaparty activists with signs trying to get people to call Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick to vote no on HCR. What struck me was not very many people were honking and the two things the protestors had in common with me, age and ethnic origin. I’m over 50 and white. The biggest difference between them is that I have TRICARE for life and want everybody who hates their insurance or worse doesn’t have any insurance to have a chance to experience preventive health care.