Pinthouse Pizza
Don't Tie Profits to Suffering
RECEIVED Mon., Aug. 10, 2009
Dear Editor,
I have started this letter five or six times and did not send it because I could not get the tone correct.
I am the product of the generosity of the American taxpayer. I lived in public housing, was fed by food stamps, treated on Medicaid, and given free lunches. So where am I sending this e-mail from? Prison or from some government housing project? The answer is “No.” I am a homeowner in the Austin area. I have lived some 20 years of my adult life in government housing – the military bases which I was stationed in for 20 years, three weeks, and three days. Currently, I am in law enforcement in the Austin area.
I am for a nonprofit government-managed public option. It is odd how someone clearly on Medicare would deny many hardworking men, women, and children from having affordable health care, as many of these people are receiving Social Security checks and government health care. If you are at least 47 years old, you may remember the argument that for-profit health care would drive down costs by requiring people to go to their family practice doctor first and channeling the profit into the CEO and stockholders' pockets. I am for profits like Henry Ford, Ray Kroc, or Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin; good for them. Profit tied to the suffering of fellow human beings is beyond rational support.
Before calling public-option health care just too expensive, answer this simple question: How much is your or your child’s life worth? Who deserves to die from appendicitis or becoming financially crippled from this routine operation?
If you don’t deserve to die, why should the other nameless guy?
I have started this letter five or six times and did not send it because I could not get the tone correct.
I am the product of the generosity of the American taxpayer. I lived in public housing, was fed by food stamps, treated on Medicaid, and given free lunches. So where am I sending this e-mail from? Prison or from some government housing project? The answer is “No.” I am a homeowner in the Austin area. I have lived some 20 years of my adult life in government housing – the military bases which I was stationed in for 20 years, three weeks, and three days. Currently, I am in law enforcement in the Austin area.
I am for a nonprofit government-managed public option. It is odd how someone clearly on Medicare would deny many hardworking men, women, and children from having affordable health care, as many of these people are receiving Social Security checks and government health care. If you are at least 47 years old, you may remember the argument that for-profit health care would drive down costs by requiring people to go to their family practice doctor first and channeling the profit into the CEO and stockholders' pockets. I am for profits like Henry Ford, Ray Kroc, or Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin; good for them. Profit tied to the suffering of fellow human beings is beyond rational support.
Before calling public-option health care just too expensive, answer this simple question: How much is your or your child’s life worth? Who deserves to die from appendicitis or becoming financially crippled from this routine operation?
If you don’t deserve to die, why should the other nameless guy?
Ron Ruiz