HEALTH: A sick solution

Health care is at a crossroads. Will this nation choose a path that discards our most vulnerable citizens — women, children and elderly — while giving tax breaks to millionaires? Or will we choose a path that validates the dignity and value of all our citizens?

Rep. Raul Labrador made his choice clear by voting to pass the American Health Care Act. Yet on his website it states:

“The Declaration of Independence has the correct order: without life we can have neither liberty nor pursue happiness.”

As a registered nurse, I saw when people don’t have access to health care they can become imprisoned by their untreated disease, are left with little energy to pursue happiness, and suffer and die prematurely. One example is a patient who received treatment only after her breast tumor was the size of a baseball.

The recent CBO score estimates that the AHCA will eliminate 23 million American citizens from health care and send many to a premature death. As a Hospice nurse, I learned the value of allowing a person to die with dignity. Isn’t it time we allow all citizens to live with dignity and respect by providing affordable access to health care, especially our most vulnerable?

ROBERTA TRUSCOTT

Coeur d’Alene