Special Comment: A Cry for Help

Keith Olbermann gave a "Special Comment" today on healthcare and Sarah Palin's so called "death panels" that comes from the heart as it is based on the experiences of his father who has spent the last six months fighting for his life. A battle he may have now begun to lose.

The comment is about how Republicans, Tea Partiers and what he called "ghouls" are attempting to block at every turn any attempt to reform a system that simple doesn't work. Their goal is profit and the human aspect doesn't seem to matter. Ghoul is the right term for those that think that way for you can only be soulless and inhuman.

For me the whole healthcare thing has been an easy decision. I didn't need facts and figures, false claims of "socialism" or other nonsense. I just had to imagine what if it was me that couldn't afford care. Or my mom, my dad or other loved ones. What if, thanks to the behavior of insurance companies, I have to make a tough decision about their care and I have to factor in whether they can afford the treatment or not. Not will it improve their life, is it worth it for quality of life or myriad of other considerations but will it be covered by insurance and if not how to pay for it. That is the system we have now. That is the true death panels. That is the system the Republicans are fighting with everything they have to keep in place and nearly 50% of the country is fighting with them, may never having taken that step to imagine "what if it were me?". My god, how inhuman. How evil.

Tomorrow is a so-called Healthcare summit as the President, Democrats and Republicans try to come to a compromise on healthcare. It will fail because instead of a room full of people thinking "what is best for Americans", they instead will think "what is best for my corporate sponsors." It isn't an issue of how this summit will be sabotaged, just an issue of how the Republicans will claim to have been victimized during it resulting in their continued and determined desire to say no to anything that is corporate first.

It is time that Americans, both on the right and the left, stop accepting that from them. The Democrats need to grow a pair and act instead of cowering at every Republican stalling tactic and it’s time for Republicans to actually engage in true compromise instead of demanding but never giving. Change is scary but once again I beg of you...imagine if someone you loved needed life saving healthcare but couldn't afford it because their insurance company either dropped them or refused it. What would you expect to occur then? What would you demand? And why isn't that good enough for everyone?