{"id":6722,"date":"2017-01-14T11:08:35","date_gmt":"2017-01-14T16:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/?p=6722"},"modified":"2018-08-16T15:49:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T20:49:10","slug":"when-your-congressman-tries-to-kill-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/?p=6722","title":{"rendered":"When your Congressman Tries to Kill You"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>then sends you a perky email asking <img src='http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/hultgren\/hultgren-smaller.jpg' alt='hultgren-200' class='ngg-singlepic ngg-right' \/>how you feel about that, I think it only courteous to respond.<\/p>\n<p>Click below to see the text of my emailed response to Randy Hultgren:<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>If you persist in your attempts to kill me, I will leave no stone unturned in my efforts to make sure you are never elected to anything again.<\/p>\n<p>In 1997, as a wife and mother of four, I was diagnosed with Acute Myelongenous Leukemia.  After a year of treatment I was cured and at this length of time am now no more likely to get leukemia again than is anyone else.  Yet as I was in the middle of a divorce when diagnosed and that divorce was finalized a few months into my recovery, I soon found out that a history of leukemia is one of those things that makes one uninsurable for life.<\/p>\n<p>I carried the insurance I used to get through my husband&#8217;s policy under COBRA until it timed out, and then I went to the State of Illinois pool for uninsurable citizens.  I had no trouble getting in &#8211; a history of leukemia is one of the six or seven things that mean you don&#8217;t even have to get the usual three denials from insurance companies as it&#8217;s a known-known that you are uninsurable for life.<\/p>\n<p>I paid those premiums &#8211; so high they were within a few dollars of my mortgage payment &#8211; for about six months.  The premiums were so high they had to be paid out of my savings, which would run out eventually, and the benefits were so low that I would never see any &#8211; stratospheric annual deductibles, and annual and lifetime limits that were so low it was pathetic.  Then policy in hand I went to see my family&#8217;s long time insurance agent, who gently explained, tears in her eyes, that the policy amounted to a &#8220;get in the hospital door&#8221; card, ensuring that if anything ever happened to me &#8211; say I got leukemia again, or got hit by a bus &#8211; that my family members would soon be selling everything I &#8211; and they &#8211; owned and then placing begging-for-change cups with a card explaining my sad story on the counters of area businesses in an attempt to keep me alive, as the policy certainly wouldn&#8217;t cover the care I would need.<\/p>\n<p>So I opted to house, clothe and feed my children instead and for fifteen years &#8211; until the advent of the ACA &#8211; went without healthcare &#8211; not just without health insurance, but without health care.  <\/p>\n<p>It is my understanding a revival of these Dead Pools is your current &#8220;plan&#8221; to replace the Affordable Care Act.  If you persist in this plan many of your constituents will die, and you will be their murderer.<\/p>\n<p>I will make sure as many of my friends, neighbors, and fellow voters as I can reach are aware of this fundamental fact.<\/p>\n<p>And I will hope and pray that you at least have a little trouble sleeping at night, or looking at yourself in the mirror, for thinking about all the blood you have on your hands:  you can&#8217;t come up with enough talking points to ever really wash it away you know.<\/p>\n<p>Sincerely,<\/p>\n<p>Lisa Bennett<br \/>\nGeneva, Illinois<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>then sends you a perky email asking how you feel about that, I think it only courteous to respond. Click below to see the text of my emailed response to Randy Hultgren:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[78],"tags":[2916,2935,2072,2915,9,316,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6722"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6722"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6735,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6722\/revisions\/6735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.progressivefox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}