AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE REPUBLICANS

October 7, 2013

OPEN LETTER TO SENATE AND HOUSE REPUBLICANS

Dear Madams/Sirs:

Thank you for killing me.

No, I really mean it. Thank you for killing me.

How is that possible? Well, I’m SO glad you asked. Let me explain, and hopefully you all will understand the human cost of your little temper tantrum.

The National Institutes of Health will stop accepting new patients for clinical research and stop answering hotline calls about medical questions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be forced to stop its seasonal flu program and have a "significantly reduced capacity to respond to outbreak investigations."  That means that about 10K more people, including children and old people who are most vulnerable, are not going to get a flu shot, and get sick. At least a third of them are going to die. New cancer drug trials will stop. No new drug trials will begin.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will not be able to provide local housing authorities with additional money for housing vouchers. The nation's 3,300 public housing authorities will also stop receiving payments, although most of these agencies have enough cash on hand to provide rental assistance through the end of October. This means that there are roughly 1.1 MILLION people who are going to be living on the streets in cardboard boxes, and begging for pennies to feed themselves and their families.

The Department of Agriculture will be forced to cut off support for the Women, Infants and Children program, which helps pregnant women and new moms buy healthy food and provides nutritional information and health care referrals. The program reaches some 9 million Americans. The USDA estimates most states have funds to continue their programs for a week or so, but they'll likely be unable to sustain operations for a longer period, since emergency funds are projected to run out by the end of October. Lots MORE people, this time women and children, are going to starve to death.

Of course, you don’t care anything about that, do you? After all, these are the drones that refuse to work, and who believe that they’re ENTITLED to low-cost food and housing simply because the minimum-wage jobs – plural – that they hold don’t produce enough income to support them.

Meal on Wheels has already gotten horrific cuts, and these are the people that you pretend to love so much. Most of the folks on that program have been reduced to one meal – that’s ONE MEAL – a day, thanks to your sequester. Do you actually know – or care how many of the veterans that you drooled all over at the WWII Veterans Memorial photo op depend on this ONE program to eat? How about all of the vets that are going to be without money and a place to live after the end of the month? What about their health care?

You have killed me. Would you like to know who it is that you’ve killed?

I am a child with cancer on an experimental medical program that is now not going to get the meds that I need in order to survive. I am the woman with breast cancer who won’t be able to afford to get the life-saving treatment that I need because I’m not able to pay for it because you killed most of the womens’ health programs that came through Medicaid. I am an orphan disease sufferer who was in a clinical trial for the treatment of my disease, who now will not be able to get the meds or the other medical treatments that I need. I am an adult that has adult-onset multiple sclerosis who won’t be able to get the meds or the follow-up medical monitoring that I need because your holier-than-thou “principled” stand on what you deem to be "non-essential" programs has cut off all funding for the end-phase clinical trials that I was in. 

All current patients in research programs and experimental med programs are supposed to still receive care, no matter what other programs are shuttered. That is a lie.Most if not all of us have been notified that until and unless the government is re-funded, the meds and treatments that we are all depending on just to stay alive are ending at the end of the month. Period.

So, I hope that you are all happy. None of you are going to starve or die of treatable and preventable diseases. You will, of course, “slim down” the FedGov to your own expectations, just like Generalissimo Franco did in Spain prior to WWII. Thus we will finally have the “New World Order” that you all have been working towards: the 1% will rule and live in health, safety and comfort and the 99% will starve to death in the cold/heat/dark.

I hope that you live long enough to regret your temper tantrum. I just hope that I live long enough to see it.