The Buck Stops Here -- At Home

Here is one place I really never want to go, especially in a public forum, but there is so much out there and at stake now that I have to vent, spew, whatever you want to call it – maybe educate. I’m not trying to get up on my soapbox. I’m speaking out. If you don’t want to listen, don’t read this post.

This week there is a resolution before Congress which requires the President to remove the troops within 30 days from the time the resolution is passed and no later than December 31, 2010.

There are many reasons why we need to get out of Afghanistan; I'll just name a few.

We're spending hundreds of billions of dollars - total waste - because the Afghanistan central government is totally corrupt. We have a thousand troops whose lives have been lost. And many more injured, some of them permanently. Countless individual Afghanistan citizens have been killed or injured as a result of this conflict.

We should take heed from the Russian experience in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not going to be conquered and we have to understand that the weight of history has been against our efforts from the start.

Now we have to determine whether or not America will take a new direction in Afghanistan. Not to go in deeper with the surge, but to get out. That's what is going to be discussed this week in Washington.

It's time that Congress weighed in. The Constitution makes it very clear that the War Powers are vested in the Congress. Unfortunately, a series of Presidents have made decisions to take the country into a war and to keep the country in war without seeking Congress' expressed permission. So this is, in fact, a Constitutional issue and that should be of interest to members of Congress from all over the nation, whatever their political persuasion.

And it should also be of interest to people that we can't afford this war. When you consider the fact that you have 47 million Americans who don't have any health care, they don't have it because they can't afford the premiums. You have 15 million Americans out of work. You have another 10 million Americans, at least, who could be losing their homes this year due to foreclosure. You would think that we have other priorities. You would think that it would be time for us to focus on things here at home.

I am concerned because of the cost of health care at present for those of us who do have the luxury of having health care. Last year, I turned 50. The next month, without notice, my insurance went up $350 more per month. I didn’t do anything differently the month before that would warrant this. A page on the calendar turned and that is it. By the way, that is a group plan from my office. It is not an individual plan purchased outside of my employment and for my portion it just has my husband and me on it. The total came in at almost $1,600 per month. I’m a Type I diabetic. I need health insurance and the thought of not having it terrifies me. I could not imagine being one of the 47 million in this country who have to go without it because it comes down to food on the table and/or a roof over their head; a lot can also be contributed to those 15 million who are without jobs who cannot afford either; or the 10 million who will lose their homes this year who will also have to do without all of that, too; or what about choosing between putting food on the table, paying your electricity bill, paying your heat bill or getting the prescriptions you need to stay alive. We have to choose and most of us have probably been in a dire situation where you had to make a decision about what to pick. It may not have been as frightening a decision as choosing between food, housing, utilities, health care or prescriptions, but if you think hard enough it may have been a decision that left you feeling exhausted. Imagine making some of the hardest decisions in your life for you and your family, all because of the current state of the economy.

We as a nation need to step up, loudly voice our opinions and help our elected officials make these decisions. Members of Congress are provided with outstanding health care, salaries, benefits, etc., and are blinded and sometimes do not truly understand what the rest of the American public has to deal with on a daily basis.

My employer and I made a decision to cancel that policy with a larger, major company and go with a local, regional health care medical group who try to keep their costs down. Their doctors do not get paid on how sick their patients are but by how well their patients are. I loved the doctors and diabetes nurse that I dealt with before and it was a hard decision to make but my office left it up to me as I would be affected, medically, the most. The others didn’t care but also knew that soon hitting "age milestones" they would be affected as well. Dollar wise, if I were to get the same and maybe better care, it was not a hard decision. We changed. We are happy now, but I still shutter to think that given the economic times we are experiencing, I could be one of those 47 million Americans who cannot afford health care.

With health care expenses (i.e., insurance, doctor visits, prescriptions, hospital care) on the rise, it extremely important that something be done about health care reform. This is a large task facing Congress and the President. There are many pros and cons to the past and current propositions. I will not debate those at this time because there is much more research for me to do before I could consciously do that.

But, I, for one, do not believe in the foreign wars that we are currently involved in. I believe that we as one of the richest countries in the world, have some of the poorest populations who are doing without a lot of the necessities in life. We pledge and send billions of dollars overseas only to look the other way at the problems we are facing at home.

I do believe in our servicemen and servicewomen. It is hard to stand by and watch as thousands are being killed each day – dare I say – needlessly. They are standing up for those in other countries, to help and support them, only to be shot down. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that our people should be risking their lives to give other countries inhabitants some of the "freedoms" and "luxuries" that many parts of our country suffer without – freedom. Freedom/luxury to have a home; freedom/luxury to put food on the table; freedom/luxury to put clothes on our family’s back; freedom/luxury to get medical care when needed. We have a close friend who has been in Iraq aiding during the election and then next will be off to help Afghanistan. My cousin, Sandy’s daughter is doing the same drill. I worry about them. I worry about others who have loved ones overseas taking care of other people’s people when they should be home taking care of their own people.

Home is where the heart is. Home is where the buck should start and stop. Once we have fixed our own problems, then maybe we can worry about everyone else’s – or we as a nation may not be around to help everyone else when they do need it.