Disabled heckled at meeting
At a town hall meeting in New Jersey a disabled woman who spends half her day in a wheelchair was heckled. She started to explain that she has Rheumatoid Arthritis and Sjogren’s Syndrome, both which destroy healthy nerves. Then she explained what she thought should be in the health care bill for the disabled when she was repeatedly heckled. People were screaming that she should drop her cable television and air conditioning. She was repeatedly heckled as she explained that she cannot afford her prescription medication and her mortgage. Thee hecklers were yelling that she spent too much money on her home and that she should move into public housing. (Source: American Association of People with Disabilities).
We have all heard of the hecklers in the town meetings over the last few weeks but it is unbelievable what happened to this woman in New Jersey. Regardless of where you are in the political spectrum, there is no excuse to verbally assault someone who has the floor during a meeting. Plus there is no reason to attack someone personally because you do not want to hear their view. In a democracy we expect different ideas on how things are to be done so we can pick the best one for our country’s needs. No one has exclusive rights to good ideas such that no one else can speak their mind. Those that believe that need to take an American government class so they can get a grasp on how this republic operates. Everyone has a right to speak their mind, regardless of how horrible it sounds to you.
How many of those that heckled this woman would be willing to drop their cable and Internet connection and live in public housing. If you do not have a chronic medical problem then you truly do not understand how things work for those that rely on Medicare and Medicaid. Many pills and procedures that are used everyday on those with private insurance find they cannot get help with Medicare. The dough nut hole requires people to come up with thousands of dollars of their own money before catastrophic care kicks in. Many live on social security and do not have thousands to throw around so stop taking their medication until the beginning of the new year. That can be a death sentence to those on heart or cancer medications. Issues like these need to be fixed so that we do not kill our citizens in the name of controlling costs. Those on social security are not people that should not have rights. We have all worked hard and paid into the system and now find ourselves severely injured because of an auto accident or have been forced to retire at 65 and now are trying to make ends meet.
If we don’t deal with this soon, we will truly have two type of people in America, those that have and those that have not. Money should not be the only measurement to determine if someone should live or have constitutional rights. Those that work and are in power have a responsibility to help those that cannot help themselves. If we don’t then we will not continue to be a world power as social issues will eat away at the basic structure of how our country works. Lets help everyone to be the best that they can be so we don’t have situations like we are creating now. Lets make sure we keep a country that gives everyone a chance to succeed so that everyone wants to emigrate here. If we don’t we will experience the brain drain that many countries experienced over the 20th century.
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