Let’s get it done, Obama
So, I’m in New York, I’ve got a job, and I’m working full time. So far, so good. The situation is less than perfect, though…isn’t it always? For one thing, I’m working forty hours a week over six days, meaning I have only one day off per week. That’s pretty tough, because it’s actually that I’m working five nights a week, so I have basically one night a week to go out, if I’m so inclined. It’s not like I’m that big of a party animal at this point in my life anyway, but it would be nice to have the option. Also, there’s the issue of the travel time. It’s about forty-five minutes to Manhattan to get to the job site where I work four days out of the week, but by the time of night that I get out the train has gone local, so it’s more like an hour and fifteen minutes, so add another two hours to the day, plus I always want to leave a little early in case the train gets lodged in the track and sits there for a while for no apparent reason. As for the job site where I work for the other two days out of the week, that’s even farther away, not to mention that the trains run more infrequently on the weekends. I can add three hours of travel on those days, easily.
But I can deal with all of that. What choice do I have, really? I need this job, what with the economy the way it is, and also, what other options do I have? It’s the story of my life, or at least my life for the past few years. I feel bad about complaining, because how many people actually get to do exactly what it is they want for a living? Very few. Most of us have work to deal with, and that’s just what it is: work. And considering that I’m living in the city where I’ve always wanted to live, doing a job that I still consider better than most of the ones I’ve had in the past few years, I still feel like I’m coming out on top. To live here, I’m willing to deal with it; hell, I welcome it. Just one other detail, though. This job, despite being full-time, has no health care plan. And that’s something that I’m having a really tough time reconciling myself to.
I need health care. There’s just no room for negotiation on that front. Obviously, it’s not like if I don’t have health care I’ll collapse and die on the street right now. I’m more or less healthy. But health care is about the what ifs in life; what if I come down with something serious, what if I get hit by a car on my way to work, what if, God forbid, I just want to go and have a checkup every couple of years? There’s always free clinics, but that’s a last resort, sorry, no offense to anyone who works at these places. The best option seems to me to live my life as carefully and safely as possible, until I can find a viable health care option, but let’s face it. It doesn’t matter how careful you are, you can be standing on the sidewalk when a drunk driver comes barreling up there and hits you, or you can be walking along and a piece of airplane fuselage falls out of the sky and nails you in the back of the head. It happens. Regardless of how clean and easy you live your life there are always external and internal threats. The body is a machine, organic, living tissue, meant to break down, and it is a matter of when this happens, not if. That’s why you need to keep it tuned up, and that’s why you need health care.
That’s why I’m particularly interested in the debate going on right now. Obviously reform is needed, with as many citizens without health care as there are, and me being among them. It’s kind of amazing to me, with as many things as are right with this country, that something that seems as fundamentally obvious as this should be wrong. But I guess maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised. This country is quick to drum up the funds to go bomb other countries where we’ll be ”greeted as liberators,” and get ourselves into scads of debt, but when it comes to something that seems so basic, so necessary, so obvious, we can’t all seem to get on the same page. Granted, the reason there’s such opposition isn’t fear of socialism, or even racial hatred against Obama. Those are convenient misdirection plays; the reason the health care bill can’t be passed are special interest groups lobbying to keep health care privatized. There’s a lot of money to be made by keeping the government out. But this is something that just can’t be compromised on. I voted for Obama for reasons precisely like this one, thinking that maybe, just maybe, he might actually be able to overcome the deck that’s stacked against him on this issue. I don’t think he can. Maybe it’s just the pessimist in me, but the obstacles seem too great. Still though, dammit, people, he’s trying. He’s doing everything he can, and that’s why it’s so frustrating to see his approval ratings dropping. He’s not Superman; he needs congress to back him up. It’s just they don’t seem willing to do that, and it’s millions of Americans exactly like me who are suffering for it, working stiffs who are putting in forty-plus hours a week and can still barely afford to cover rent and bills, let alone a trip to the doctor just to make sure that everything is in working order. I pray every day that they get this resolved. I pray every day that Obama is actually Superman, and that he punches through this deadlock and these special interests to actually make a change. It’s just really tough to get my hopes up. This is a president that was destined to be vilified; I felt it from the first moment he took office. I just hope that he’s got what it takes, somehow, to prove me wrong. Till he does, I’ll be going to work every day in a hardhat and bullet proof vest, wrapped in protective layers of bubble wrap. It’s the only sensible thing to do.