An open letter to Senator John McCain

Senator John McCain
(official portrait)

Dear Senator McCain,

I’d like to begin by expressing my sincere gratitude for your time spent in military service. You showed remarkable courage under extreme duress, enduring torture by the enemy while refusing an early release, or any special treatment. As a result, you’ve suffered from permanent physical disabilities after six years in captivity. I have enjoyed a lifetime as a free citizen in the greatest nation on the face of the earth, because of brave warriors like you. Thank you for your service, sir. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

Secondly we, the people, recently learned the very serious news about your cancer diagnosis, and I wanted to convey my sympathy to you. Twenty years ago my father died from that exact same disease, a glioblastoma tumor in his brain, so I am well aware of the challenge you face. It was shortly after his retirement that my father began acting uncharacteristically confused and disoriented. He also  complained of a constant headache. An MRI confirmed that he had a large brain tumor,  a glioblastoma. The neurologist diagnosed him on a Tuesday, and he had surgery the following Monday, but never regained consciousness. About two weeks later, his life support was disconnected. I’m glad your surgery was more successful than his, and I wish you the best as you continue to recover.

While I’m fairly confident that a sitting U.S. Senator such as yourself has access to the very best healthcare in the world (probably much better care than a retired serviceman living in Savannah, Georgia would ever get), I do not blame my father’s surgical team for his death. Clearly the tumor killed him, not the operation to remove it. The doctors did their very best, I’m quite sure. It just wasn’t good enough, though I’m not sure any other doctor on earth would have done much better. It was a long time ago, and medical progress in the United States has advanced at an incredible pace during my lifetime.

And we will all die, sooner or later. It’s never been a question of “if”, but “when.” Though my own death should not occur anytime soon, (at least, not as far as I know) I’ve still prepared for that possibility by creating a living will. I’ve even gone as far as planning for my own funeral. When my demise becomes imminent, it won’t matter whether it comes as a surprise or not.

I also don’t blame Big Medicine or Big Government for my father’s death. Dad died years before Barack Obama was elected President and the Affordable Healthcare Act was passed. I would like to say a few words about your vote in opposition to repeal of the ACA, which I will describe from this point forward as “Obamacare.”

Frankly, to describe my feelings as bitter disappointment would be putting it mildly. I’ve read your excuse for voting against repeal, and Senator, I’m very disturbed. You seem to think it’s more important that you redistribute wealth than keeping your primary campaign promise. Only last year you won a difficult campaign for reelection by promising the voters of Arizona that you would repeal Obamacare if given the chance. You just broke that solemn vow with an excuse that is truly pathetic. It is not the responsibility of Congress to provide healthcare insurance to every American.

Obamacare is an abomination of a law that has been doomed to fail from Day One, and the Democrat politicians who crafted the legislation never expected it to work as promised, with lower premiums and better options where you could keep your existing doctors if you liked them. Obamacare was designed with the goal of creating a path to single payer healthcare — in other words, socialized medicine. With a gleeful thumbs-down, you killed the bill.

Senator McCain, does your word mean nothing? How can the American people ever trust you again, if you won’t keep your most important campaign promises?

Your excuse for voting no is that the bill doesn’t offer a replacement for Obamacare, but your first obligation is to repeal the existing law. You promised you would. If the law gets repealed, Democrats will have no choice except to negotiate earnestly in bipartisan fashion, trying to insert the bits and pieces of Obamacare into new healthcare reform legislation, or during the next election cycle they will have to explain to voters why they obstructed reform and wouldn’t cooperate to draft a law that will actually help alleviate the obscenely high cost of healthcare services.

My concerns about Obamacare can be summed up using only two words: Charlie Gard. That poor child in the U.K. died today, after his parents were refused the opportunity to seek treatment here in the U.S. that may have given him a chance. But soulless bureaucrats embedded in a single-payer system wouldn’t let Charlie’s parents take him home. We can never know if that new treatment would have helped, but we can be absolutely certain that refusing to allow the treatment doomed the poor child for sure. His parents had healthcare coverage, but it offered them no choice, and no hope.

Single payer healthcare is also where our healthcare system is headed, unless obstructionists like you will vote for repeal of Obamacare. The most galling aspect of the current law is that you and your fellow members of Congress have exempted yourselves. You don’t have to suffer the consequences of your own vote. And you don’t have to worry like my friend in Georgia, who wrote:

(For a while) I could not get health insurance and when I did, it didn’t help me pay for anything. There is also only one insurer in the market this year in Georgia that many doctors don’t accept, and it was announced this week that their premiums are going up 41% next year.

Another friend who lives in Florida said that she can’t find a doctor who accepts her insurance with an office within a 100 mile radius of her house, and only one insurance provider offers a plan in her state under Obamacare.

What good is insurance coverage, if no doctors within a reasonable distance from home will accept it? My friend is an entrepreneur currently getting zero benefit from her policy, but she has no choice but keep it because Obamacare has practically destroyed the free market, and she needs insurance in the event of a major medical issue. For every friend of mine who previously couldn’t get coverage because of some preexisting condition, a half dozen or more have been adversely affected.

President Obama didn’t keep his promises of lower premiums and better choices to the American people when he shilled for support for this insidious new law, and you have broken your promise to the American people as well, by voting no on its repeal. I have always thought of you as being a man of principle and integrity, making your vote on this crucial issue particularly disappointing.

We are NOT a Socialist country, Senator McCain. The Constitution does not give everyone a right to free healthcare. Nor does it give the government the right to force its citizens to buy a product that isn’t very good.

Our nation thrives on free-market capitalism. I would hope that you realize that millions of Americans are suffering financial hardship trying to pay for expensive, lousy insurance coverage. Obamacare WILL ultimately fail, just as President Trump has predicted. Many people have lost significant income due to Obamacare. Companies have cut back on the maximum number of hours an employee may work per week to avoid being penalized by this horrible law. A law that you promised to repeal, until you decided to change your mind.

I hate to suggest this, sir, but I have to wonder if you have put politics and your personal feelings before your patriotic duty — do you really hate President Trump so much that you would hurt the entire country just to spite him? I’d like to believe you’re a bigger man than that, Senator McCain, because it would be both childish and churlish to put politics before principle at such a critical time for our country. But I’m trying to make sense of your vote contradicting your campaign promise, and at a loss for a logical explanation. Where is your better idea, since you didn’t like this particular repeal law?

We the American people are sick and tired of our politicians lying to us.

Please, either keep your word, or resign immediately.

Sincerely,

A Thoroughly Disgusted American Citizen