The topic is healthcare reform.
What follows immediately is for demographic purposes only. I am a 63-year-old US Army Infantry veteran (RA 16 805 398; June 22, 1964 - June 21, 1967). Furthermore, as a benefit of my service I am receiving excellent health care through the Veterans Administration at no cost to me whatsoever. As I am so fortunate, some wonder why I'm as passionate as I am about reforming America's healthcare delivery system.
The answer to that is summed tersely: On every level, the country I love is falling apart, and much of it, perhaps most, is attributable to our wholly dysfunctional healthcare delivery scheme.
Hundreds of millions of our citizens are suffering with exorbitant premiums (whether or not employer paid or individually), and, except for the insurance industry, many healthcare providers, health equipment manufacturers, and the pharmaceutical industry, businesses large and small are carrying a burden that makes of them noncompetitive in an aggressively competitive world. Almost like a tragic cancer patient, my country is slowly dying. And this we must not let it do.
In 2002 and 2004, I walked and I talked and I wrote and wrote and wrote. I worked in the Democratic headquarters of Katherine Harris' infamous 13th congressional district, at the south end of the Tampa Bay, trying to staunch the flow of the too-many-to-count Bush and Republican moral deprecations. The 2002 congressional race wasn't even close.
Not so in 2004. However, it was closer, but still no cigar. Nonetheless, we began to sense the first ripples of citizen anger building.
In 2006 I had moved to Reno, the "Biggest Little City in the World," in one of the reddest states of the country. Those who composed the volunteer base in 2002 were senior citizens. The youth brigade had yet to form. In 2006, in Reno, that brigade was forming.
In 2008, what I witnessed in the Democratic headquarters in Reno was a mirror of what was going on across the country. That youth brigade had grown to a massive army. And it would not be defeated. Nor, as the returns clearly demonstrated, it was it. Make no mistake, that army was screaming for genuine change; in everything! It was the mantra of their raison d'être. Review your surveys: the party label - Democratic - only figured in the mix because it was the strongest opposition to the staid and completely corrupt GOP.
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