Pursuing Happiness - An Open Letter to Congress

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to express my support for President Barack Obama's health care bill.

I have spent the past nine months on bed rest due to a low back injury. I am twenty years old. My recovery has forced me to drop out of college, which has left me dependent on my parents. After my father's company was sold, he was left unemployed, and my family began our health insurance extension granted by California's COBRA law.

However, once my COBRA insurance runs out, I am on my own, most likely refused independent health insurance under the guise of a pre-existing condition. That will prevent me from getting the necessary care I need to heal.

My insurance discourages long-lasting treatments like physical therapy, allowing me only twelve visits each year. Contrastingly, a spinal fusion would be easily approved, an intense operation viewed as a "quick fix" for my relatively minor injury. Instead of caring for me with less invasive therapies, my insurance company would take the easy way out, and leave a previously healthy young woman with fused vertebrae.

I do not know what I will do when my insurance runs out. If I have to, I will use my allotted college funds to pay for health care, because I won't be able to get coverage in later years without a job worthy of a college graduate. It seems illogical – and unfair – that an injury would affect my life in this way.

I would like to believe that this is only a small part of myself. I would like to believe that I would one day get out of bed and become a positive, participating member of society. I would like to believe that I, too, can live the healthy, happy life this country promises.

I urge our elected representatives to weigh the consequences of not reforming health care at the soonest possible moment. As our president reminded us Wednesday evening, "the politically safe move would be... to defer reform one more year, or one more election, or one more term." But we cannot wait. The nation cannot wait. I cannot wait.

In the concluding paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, our Framers pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. It is time that our citizens again rise to that challenge, working together to build a stronger society. Hold onto the self-evident truth that we have certain inalienable rights - to live without pain, to conquer an illness, and to have the physical ability to pursue happiness.

(Author's Note: Organizing for America has requested that we write letters to the editor in support of Mr. Obama's bill. That request inspired this letter. Yes, it has been submitted.)

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