Protecting our own.

I wrote the other day that Bug Henderson died.  What I didn’t mention was that he died without health insurance.

Bugs brought millions of people great joy and fun in his entertaining way and with his soulful, bluesy music. Yet, when he died he had no health insurance.

You see, Bugs didn’t work for a corporation or company who provides healthcare to its employees.  He was a self-employed artist.  A craftsman, traveling the world doing his gig day in and day out.  Bugs was not a free loader. (The Tea Party wants you to believe that it is because of freeloaders we have Obamacare.) They are wrong.

It is because of Bugs Hendersons of the world we have it. And my daughter, who graduated from college without a job.  And about two million of her friends who were in the same boat.  And about  a gazillion people who have pre-existing needs that the Big Insurance companies didn’t want to cover. But now they will because there is a reserve covering that.

Friends of Bugs had to host a benefit concert the other night to help defray some of his mounting medical bills. A man who brought such joy and happiness into the world was without coverage for his very heath. It was up to his friends to bail him out.

But there are those in our society who would rather spend money fighting wars, building spy satellites, trying to buy friends with foreign aid, instead of helping out our fellow man with universal health insurance.

Not socialism you numbskulls.  Insurance made affordable through insurance companies and backed by our tax dollars. But still in the realm of free enterprise.

The next time you hear some hotheaded legislator or congressman stand up and spout off about our national healthcare crisis and how President Obama is leading our nation to ruin, think about Bugs Henderson.  Go put one of his recordings on your CD and conjure up his image.  Smiling and contorted on stage making music for all his fans to hear.  Harming not a soul. But dying with out health care.

You do that, then look at me and tell me Oamacare is killing America.  No, what is killing America is stupidity. 

And we don’t have any insurance for that.

We don’t even have a cure for it.  And it is spreading faster than the caner that killed Bugs.