Health Care Reform

In the past week I have gotten about 20 emails about health care reform. People are worried about rising costs, but they also want access to the best of the best. It is hard to believe that the government can settle both problems. The underlying issue in any health topic is to preserve and protect the sanctity of life. Somehow that gets left out of the debate when important health resources - like medical nutrition counseling for diabetics - get cut and elective procedures - like abortion - get increased funding.

So how do you get a point across to elected officials?


Below is a letter I wrote to my representative. I did some research on his website to see what I could start with and found some great information. He has a long history of lowering taxes and using resources wisely. On that part of his career I completely agree with him. I hoped by starting with common ground he would understand my concern in a way that is important to him - fiscal responsibility. I am posting this letter so anyone contemplating contacting their representative can hopefully take some ideas from my sample.


Dear Representative Peters,

I wanted to contact you to let you know my thoughts on the upcoming health care reform. First of all, I wanted to say that I read your biography and admire the way you have dealt with money in the past. Your record shows that you look out for the best interests of those you represent by cutting waste and making sure money goes where it is most needed.

I will try to keep my comment short and sweet. Although I agree with many others that health care needs to reform, I disagree with some of the ways that are proposed to do just that. It is important to me that abortion be explicitly excluded from any type of national health care plan that may be proposed. It is something that is most times an elective procedure and the funds could be used somewhere else. Please help protect those of us that feel abortion is the killing of an unborn child by keeping our taxes from providing exactly that. If you disagree with my request I would like to know why you believe that my hard earned money is best utilized in that capacity.

Thank you,


Jenelle

Education

This summer is flying by! I enjoyed finishing up the year teaching psychology to juniors and for the past two weeks I have loved helping out with the extended school year program as a special education para. All that has meant more work for me and no "prep" time to update this blog. The summer gets busy and I hope everyone is enjoying it!

In other news, I had my monthly board meeting this week and was reminded of something that I find truly important - education. The more people are educated about the issues, the more chance we have of succeeding. It is amazing the amount of items that can be in political bills. It is extremely hard to stay educated on what they are all about. We have all heard that legislation that has hundreds or even a thousand pages is being passed before anyone could have time to read it. Legislation that sounds like a good thing may have many negative items slipped in at the last minute. One thing that is not last minute is the inclusion of abortion in the new health care plans - President Obama has shown that this is an important issue to him. The health care plans are so comprehensive that even if it does not explicitly state that as a service, it could be easily justified in just about any scenario. In most cases, abortion is an elective procedure and should be seen as just that. The congress is not voting on the bill yet, but I will post on here when they are so that you can feel free to contact your representatives while the issue is directly in front of them.