Where are the Bleeding Hearts NOW?

Eight year old Duncan McCrillis may die of brain cancer. His HMO insurance will not pay for the life saving chemotherapy treatment he needs to survive. A benefit is being done to help his family raise money for his treatment. It is being held at St. Theresa's Church on Saturday June 15th at 7pm. Duncan's family is scrambling to find a way to get through this terrible situation and it's nice that people are trying to help raise money for this youngster.

What isn't nice, however, is that our government officials have done nothing to address the deplorable business practices of the insurance companies operating in Massachusetts that let things like this happen. The bleeding heart liberals who pat themselves on the backs as the defenders of the downtrodden spend all their time fighting for free needle programs for druggies, gay education training for the Department of Education and pay increases for themselves, but what have they done for the Duncan McCillis' of this state?

They have done nothing.

It makes me sick that this eight-year-old child may be robbed of a healthy, happy life at the hands of low level accountants working at an HMO with no medical training at all. What makes me even more sick is that we have no leadership from our elected officials who would rather accept millions in campaign contributions from insurance company lobbyists than reform the health care system.

Our state officials have the authority to pass a law forcing insurance companies to provide life saving treatment in critical cases like this one. They have it within their authority to create a critical care fund for cases such as this so that our tax money can be used to save lives directly. But no, doing that doesn't translate into large campaign contributions for their bank accounts. Doing that doesn't pander to some labor union or satisfy the contracts of state workers who will hold signs for them on election day. And again I say it makes me sick.

We have money in our state budget for every political interest group seeking funds to promote their phony "feel good" programs that only serve to increase the influence of the groups involved. We have plenty of cash to buy methadone for heroin addicts who have made bad choices and want us to pay for their habit. But we don't have money to save the life of a dying child? Sorry, I just don't buy it.

But, I'm not just laying this one at the feet of our state officials I am also blaming you. That's right. If Duncan McCillis dies without the chemotherapy he needs to live, we all have to take a large portion of the blame. The majority of people in our state just don't vote or pay attention to where our tax money is going and that is the root cause of the problem.

You see, the politicians know that the bulk of the people who vote (as small as that number is) just don't pay attention to what their so called "leaders" do when it's not an election year. Our officials vote against tax breaks for senior citizens, refuse to support air conditioning in nursing homes, completely ignore the health care mess, and then a few months before the election they vote for something that sounds good and looks productive and you people buy it every time.

Last year Andover had an election where 9% of the registered voters bothered to participate in democracy. Considering that more than 50% of the people in Andover are not even registered to vote, that means less than 1% of the people in Andover cared enough to pay attention to issues and cast a ballot. And the politicians know this. They depend on it. They have no incentive to make the right decisions. They have no motivation to do the right thing when nobody is watching. And as a result, an 8-year-old child faces death before his life has really begun.

Just imagine how responsive your state representatives, state senators and other elected officials would be if just 50% of the eligible voters were paying attention to them on a regular basis. Just think about how different our health care system might be for children like Duncan McCillis if the legislature paid more attention to life threatening issues instead of wasting our tax money on stupid things like needles for heroin users.

It's sad that the criminals and the takers in our society rank higher on the priority scale of politicians than an eight-year-old fighting for his life. Even sadder, is that they get away with this special interest based prioritization because the public is too busy to act responsibly and force our officials do the right thing.

If you have an extra minute on Saturday night go down to St Theresa's Church on Plymouth Street in Methuen to help out the private citizens who are breaking their backs to help this dying child. And if you have any compassion at all for your own children who might be in this predicament someday, pick up the phone and tell your elected officials to stop taking money from the insurance companies and pass a law forcing them to make decisions based on the health of their clients, instead of the bottom line profit in their bank accounts.

The life you save could someday be the life of your own child.