Soapbox

    Ladies and gentlemen, former Governor Mike Huckabee wants you to know that if you are poor and you contract a treatable but costly condition… you should just die. Now  he's not honest enough to actually admit it, but that is the clear logical conclusion to his scenario.

    This week Huckabee compared trying to obtain health insurance to cover a pre-existing condition to going to State Farm a week after your house burned down and asking to buy a policy. If you ask to purchase insurance after you learn you have cancer and are faced with treatment costs you cannot afford, the genial Reverend Huck says that's just like trying to insure your car after you total it. And that's crazy, right? That's Entitlement with a capital "E"! And so….

  And so- what? His fawning FOX News interviewers,  awed by his sagacity and amused by his wit just left it there, but I want to someone to ask him- "…and so- what, governor? In America, the land of the free, a nation of incredible wealth– what should happen next to this human being, who has apparently burned to the ground?" 
    How does this track? If you wreck your car and have no insurance to fix it, I suppose, worst case scenario, you can always just do without a car and bum a ride from a friend or ride the bus. If you develop diabetes and have no insurance… there is no long-term health care equivalent to riding the bus. You can't really bum a friend's glucometer or drop by the ER for daily treatments for a buck-fifty.
    And so… what? You should just grow sicker and sicker, and even die without treatment? Sucks to be you, but you're no better than a wrecked Ford, pal.  I mean you were stupid enough not to buy health insurance — on your $9/hr Walmart salary. Yes, only stupidity- and a desire to eat- would ever prevent a person from buying your own insurance!  If you were that foolish, spending money on luxuries like rent and electricity- don't expect the insurance company to have to pay for your foolishness!
   Just die already.

   This is wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. First of all,  we actually require people to have car insurance, and home-owners insurance, which prevents these scenarios, but hey- why ruin a good analogy with realism, right?  Mike Huckabee wrongly blames rising health costs on insurance companies having to cover pre-existing conditions, which is just not the case. There are many reason for rising costs, and one of them is the fact that so many people lack health insurance and cannot get routine, preventative care. One of them is not people with pre-existing conditions who can no longer be denied coverage.
   The scenario Huckabee presents is far from the usual situation, either. Sure there are people who could buy insurance but don't- until they are diagnosed with cancer. But for millions of Americans, the story is not like that at all. By and large, people want  health insurance. People want to be able to go to the doctor when they get sick without sweating bullets over how much it will cost! But it's not always possible to get, and it's not always possible to keep.
    When you change jobs, anything you were being treated for under your old plan is now a pre-existing condition.
    Suppose you have a job and insurance, and you and your husband decide to start a family… and right after you learn that you're expecting,  you lose your job.  That baby you were so excited about 2 months ago when you went to the doctor?  It's now a pre-existing condition! Just like a burned down house. Mike Huckabee thinks it's ridiculous for you to ask your new employer's insurance to pay for your foolishness!
   Yes, this man, who is SO concerned about the health of every damn egg in your body that  he doesn't even want you to be allowed to take birth control pills- just in case what doctors say won't happen, happens and it prevents a fertilized zygot from implanting in your womb… this same man would rather you go without health care during your pregnancy than require an insurance company to  offer you a policy. How's that for family values!

   Of course, if confronted about this dichotomy, he'd probably offer some 'bootstrap'  hogwash about personal responsibility and it's not your insurance company's fault that you had sex, so you need to suck it up and pay out of your own pocket. I mean heavens, he's not actually saying you should die, he's just saying…uh… What?  Be required to pay much, much more for an insurance policy? 
   But the reality is that unless you forgo electricity, or gas for your car, or eating… paying hospital delivery bills out of pocket or carrying much higher premiums (as 'punishment' for being so 'reckless' ) just isn't a possiblity for many people! I don't know what he thinks the working people of America are spending their money on instead of health insurance, (Bingo?) but trust me, for a lot of folks- it's food and rent!!

     And for our hypothetical cancer man? Gee, maybe his church can hold a bake sale to raise money for his chemo. Ok, ok- a thousand bake sales.
     This, to me, is the very definition of "entitlement": believing that because you have easy access to affordable health insurance, anyone who doesn't have it must be stupid, or lazy, and deserves to…. just die, if that's what it comes to. He doesn't want you to die, but in the name of fairness and the free market, it's a sacrifice he's willing to make.
    Heartless. Utterly without compassion. And definitely NOT pro-life, Mr. Huckabee. No, not even a little bit.

He heels in a way he never has before.

In his now-silent world, I don't know
if I represent security or if simply loyalty compels him,
but when he rises
from the tattered lambswool that has been his bed
for a dozen years,
he walks slowly to my side and waits there
as I do the ironing or wash the dishes,
sometimes with his face almost against
a cabinet or the laundry basket,
wedged awkwardly between leg and wall or shower door
and simply stands, silent, staring ahead at nothing,
ready.
Some days I trip over him a half-dozen times
when I turn without realizing that my dark, rheumy-eyed shadow
has left off his dozing and come to stand sentinel.
In exasperation I'll blurt,  "Get out of the way, pup!"
before I remember
that he cannot hear me,
has no concept of 'the way'.

In his youth, after we brought him in
from the cold of
scavenging ditches and dodging cars
he was afraid of everything:
gurgling water, fluttering sheet, busy broom-
he needed frequent and fervent reassurance that the world
was not about to turn on him again,
end the reprieve from fear we had given.
I used to wish he would just relax.
Today he regards the world with sphinx-like impassivity
wanders with unflappable calm from food dish to water bowl
to back door.
He sometimes tries to jump the steps on to the porch
as if he doesn't remember that his back legs
just don't work like that anymore
and seems stoically clueless of basic commandments like
thou shall sit before I put your leash on.
But when he leaves off one of his frequent deep sleeps
he wanders to stand at my side
in a perfect 'heel'
and follows me quietly as I move from place to place,
standing ready,
protecting me- or drawing security from my nearness-
I don't know.

I have grown accustomed to his presence.
But when I remember to, I leave off what I am doing
bend down to fondle white-fletched ears still silken,
whisper endearments they cannot hear
mindful that one day soon my shadow will be gone.