Jack of Harts

Some of you may remember that I had health insurance before Obamacare. It was 100 dollars a month, and paid for the first 1,000 dollars worth of treatment for each year. So I could do my yearly checkups and get any prescriptions the doctors said I needed. But it didn’t cover my absolute need to be protected from Ovarian cancer and all the other things Obamacare said had to be covered for males like me. Gender is fluid after all, and one never knows when I may decide to identify as female, so the plans that didn’t take that into account had to disappear. The replacement plan was three times as much, and lacked the 1,000 dollar a year coverage, so I did without.

Then last year my appendix exploded for some 40,000 dollars and some guy in a car pulled out in front of me on my motorcycle for another 20,000 in bills. His insurance paid for that, but I still had the other bill. After charity, I’m down to only paying 200 bucks a month on the loan to cover the medical care, and 50 bucks a month to Gold Cross Ambulance for taking me in.

At which time, I decided I had to get Obamacare. It didn’t matter how expensive it was, I had to find some way to afford it. The government wouldn’t let me sign up until the end of the year, which is why I didn’t have it when the accident hit me, but I did sign up in November when they finally graciously allowed me to sign up for the health care they were penalizing me for not having beforehand. The dozens of options from numerous insurance providers are gone now, replaced by three plans from one company. The one I picked was the 700 dollar a month plan. I could have gotten the 360 dollar a month plan, but that one is basically useless. And the other plan was over 1,000 dollars a month. So I got the 700 dollar plan, and set aside several thousand dollars of the accident settlement fund to allow me to pay for the plan. For a time.

And now I’ve been to the Mayo Clinic again for checkups and sleep tests and stuff like that. Seems they think I have a number of issues that need working on. And of course the new 700 dollar Obamacare plan doesn’t cover everything. Over 3,000 dollars of this year’s bills are uncovered, meaning I have to pay for them too. So I’m paying 100 dollars a month to work them down. On top of the 250 dollars a month for last year’s health care bills.

The total is more than my house payment. This is life under Obamacare. And this is why many of those in Washington are there. They were sent to fix the problem, and they need to. Because life under Obamacare is something that millions of my fellow citizens cannot endure. We either don’t have it all and are being penalized for it, or we are running our budgets deep into the red to get it. Either way, our money will soon run out. This is unbearable.

This is life under Obamacare.

And if the government we sent to Washington doesn’t fix the damage that Obamacare has done, we will send someone else to do the job.

Because we refuse to live a life under Obamacare.

Some of you spent the weekend enjoying time with family. Some of you went to church. Some of you celebrated that Christ was reborn.

Some of you made fun of those who celebrate Easter for its religious significance. Some of you simply ignored the religious aspects of the holiday in favor of cute bunnies and eggs. A search on google for images related to Easter is an example of that. This was the only non-Egg or non-Bunny image I could find on the first few pages. Just this suggesting that there might be some other meaning to the holiday.

So what is the holiday? Well, for starters it is a Holy Day. Yes, that is the origin of the term holiday. Much like Christmas was once said as Christ Mass. But Easter in many ways is closer to its original form than many other Christian Holidays. It was a celebration of new life and fertility before Christianity was a going concern, and that is where the egg symbol comes from. The egg-toting bunny is a purely Christian addition, and bringing eggs and presents to the good little children much like Santa Claus.

But all of that history comes down into one thought. What is the meaning of Easter? Is it a time to get together with family? An excuse to get a day off work? A chance to mock those who celebrate Easter? For most of us in America, it is the time to remember that God sent his only son to die for us. To shield us from death. To give us new life.

And that is the reason for the cross. God could have remained aloof from us, speaking to priests in a temple and never showing his face. But he came to Earth as a man and grew up as the son of a man and a woman. A carpenter who built things with his hands. He brought a face to God, and he became one of us. He walked in our footsteps and then he died in them. And then he rose once more so that we would know the truth of his words. To be good to one another.

We celebrate the love of a God who cared so much for us that he was willing to sacrifice a part of Himself to give all of us new life and new meaning. That is why me and mine celebrate Easter.