I had on Good Morning America today as I was getting ready for work and saw Diane Sawyer’s interview with the family of Leeland Eisenberg, the man who took five people hostage at Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign office on Friday. What the family had to say was shocking but sadly too familiar — Lee Eisenberg was desperate for healthcare.
The man accused of taking five people hostage at a Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign office desperately wanted help with a drinking problem, but lacked insurance and money to pay for it, his family said Monday. –snip-I know I’ll be accused of politicizing this story, but it seems reality has already done that.
"It was an act of desperation to try and get help," his stepson, Ben Warren, told ABC's "Good Morning America" Monday. –snip-
His wife, Lisa Warren, told Foster's Sunday Citizen her husband had been binge-drinking for three weeks and desperately wanted help with his problem. She had filed for divorce on Tuesday, and the couple were due to for a domestic violence hearing shortly after Eisenberg allegedly walked into the Clinton office on Friday.
She said Eisenberg saw a televised Clinton campaign ad where a man said the senator helped him when an insurance company refused to pay for his son's medical treatment. –snip-
"When he was on his medication he was always making me laugh, he spoiled me," she said. "It was perfect in my eyes. But without the medication and (with) the use of the alcohol, he turned into a different person."
All of us should be ashamed that any person in this country could be driven to such an act of desperation just so he could get healthcare. It raises a question that is posed in Michael Moore’s Sicko: Who are we? What kind of country, let alone the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world, allows this to happen to its own citizens?
I guess it’s pretty obvious why Eisenberg didn’t go to the campaign headquarters of Giuliani or any republican candidates. Even a mentally unstable alcoholic on a three-week binge knew he probably would’ve just been told that “socialized medicine” would turn us into Red China in a matter of weeks. That's not what Eisenberg needed. He needed healthcare.
Despite what republicans say, we actually live in a nation. We are not a nation of 300 million independent nation states. I looked at a quarter and saw that it indeed reads, “E Pluribus Unum” — From Many, One. From many individuals, one nation. Republicans think it says “Every Man For Himself” or, more accurately, “Go Fuck Yourself”. We’re the United States, not 300 million warring states.
We do not live in a vacuum. I know the republican reaction to Eisenberg’s plight will be, “It’s his own fault,” “I ain’t paying for some lazy drunk asshole’s health insurance,” “He should’ve worked hard and gotten a better job so he could afford his own insurance” etc. etc., as if Eisenberg’s or anyone else’s problems can be neatly walled off and its effects isolated. But this is delusional, as well as almost cartoonishly cold hearted.
Yes, it would be greet if Eisenberg could buy his own health insurance. But he couldn’t, and his family wasn’t able to help him. So what now? What if Eisenberg had killed one of the five hostages? What if he had killed a family while driving drunk during his three week drinking binge? What would the effects be on his family if Eisenberg had gone to jail for the rest of his life or had been permanently injured?
What’s cheaper for the American taxpayer, money for Eisenberg’s alcohol treatment program or the cost of a long trial, permanent incarceration, permanent hospitalization, or the life of a single innocent person?
Republicans are all about punishment. If you can’t afford health insurance for your kid, you should be punished by having your kid get sick and die, ignoring the simple fact that the kid is receiving the death penalty simply for being born. If you are an alcoholic and can’t afford an alcohol treatment program, you deserve to die from alcoholism, ignoring the fact that your alcoholism may ruin countless lives in the process. If you get laid off and can’t pay your mortgage, you should be punished by losing your house, ignoring the fact that your entire family will also lose the house, and the epidemic of foreclosures is further crippling the US economy, which affects all of us. They might as well say that if you don’t have health insurance, you shouldn’t walk because you might trip and break your ankle or cross the street where a reckless driver might hit you. Or you will be punished. And your family will be punished. For the rest of your lives.
Republicans think all of us should be at the risk of losing everything, ignoring the fact that people can do terrible things to themselves and others when they have nothing left to lose. And that’s bad for all of us. They think good behavior is created through punishment, ignoring the fact that that punishment is often inflicted on those who have done nothing wrong.
I believe in personal responsibility. But what makes me different from a republican is that I also believe in shared responsibility. Because I am an American, a citizen of the United States of America, and it is my responsibility to make the country better, not just myself. I believe in both personal and shared responsibility because I am an individual, but I am connected to other individuals by the fact that they are fellow citizens of this nation we live in. My happiness or despair is inextricably linked to that of my fellow citizens. I can't ignore it, nor do I want to. I realize that I am responsible for my own actions, but those actions can have powerful effects on others. Republicans want to ignore the suffering of fellow Americans by convincing themselves that this suffering is deserved, punishment for bad behavior, even though their only proof of the bad behavior is the punishment.
I am a citizen of the United States of America. The republicans want to live in the 300 Million Warring States of Go Fuck Yourself. And that isn’t America.
PS To Tom DeLay, who recently said that no American is denied healthcare, there’s someone you should meet.
Reply to taxed to death: This guy was raised Catholic just like me I bet. In "taxed to death's mind" only the quarterbacks and leaders know what they are doing. In reality, those that can do, and those tha cannot teach, and those that don't know anything and are too lazy to do anything-manage.
Tons of people self motivate to any asperation. This puke likely did a poor job in his country bluffing his way along and around the computer industry like tons of Americans do daily that fool people once, maybe twice. In Denmark that puts you out of business.
Here is a wakeup call that denies me making another 100 simple, yet complex to you, points to evaluate it from: Nearly all of the people in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Belgium/Luxemburg would not give up their health care system to be in and American Universal health care plan designed to fail from the beginning and fleece the population for the sake of Britain.
That being said, We don't even have that planned failure in place yet, so hold your horses, there will be plenty to criticize about the fake health care planned for you that gives more money to insurance companies, and takes it from you, and you will pay tons for it more than you do now, because we don't limit doctor's fees. And never will.
All of the citizens, except the most peculiar and retarded people, from the countries listed above would not have or even allow there to be a health care system like the one we have now that allows insurance companies(all underwritten by British firms;reinsured)to sell paper, control the prices to benefit them and dumb-assed doctors passing themselves off as gods on the TV tube for idiots to worship.
Nice story though, but full of shit repube-lichen BS and you know it. Silly Wabbit.
Nobody would want to depend on our health care system and neither would this clown. The minute he gets sick, he will be back in Europe getting health care. Lucky stiff.
We get taxed and get nothing in return, so fuck you with asking for something once and awhile.