Forum Post: Health Care and Welfare

There will be things we don’t agree on, but you may find interesting to hear. For example, I would much rather see health care offered in this nation for each and every young and old person, and especially for the drug addicts, disabled veterans, and mentally challenged persons living on the streets. Although, I believe welfare should be strictly reserved for disabled veterans, disabled persons, and mentally challenged individuals, but not reserved for drug addicts or lazy, entitled persons.

More and more veterans are ending up on the streets due to difficulties adjusting to life after deployments, or just the economic hardship of the times. Due to the drastic budget cuts, more and more mentally challenged persons are living and dying on the streets, because there is no family to take care of them. Instead of assisting someone’s addiction to drugs with welfare, why not give him or her health insurance so that he or she may enter a rehab facility, instead of going to jail and back on the streets? Our education system is failing millions of children and allowing them to become drug dealers because they don’t posses the skills, or lack the opportunity for a better life.

To think even further, what if we created programs within these rehab facilities that taught new skills, possibly providing counseling to abused and neglected individuals that cultivate a sense of community and offer family for those that have never had one. Structured classes, like art and music would nurture and resuscitate these broken souls. Professional counselors are available to listen, and provide mental support. These facilities would generate thousands of jobs within the private and public sector of health professionals, social workers, and teachers. Our current system is feeding our addictions and further perpetuating a downward spiral for everyone. As with most baby boomers, my grandmother relies on Medicare, but it did not cover the dentures she lost a few months ago in a public bathroom.

Instead of taking out a high-interest credit card to pay for them, she had to dip into the money that goes into her housing, food, and all other expenses. She is almost ninety and because she had polio as a child, she has always limped with her special shoes but never complained or asked for a handout. Those shoes are so rare, that she has been wearing the same pair for many, many, years and because they are too expensive for her to replace she continues to wear the same painful shoes. She can’t get a job to generate more income, but if there was full health insurance offered to her, she would be able to save tremendously in her daily living expenses and be treated with the respect that the elderly deserve, by getting her dentures and shoes at no cost.