A little more than a week ago I crashed a hang glider. It scared the crap out of me but I walked away from it. However, there was major damage done to one shoulder and I have surgery in just over a day to take care of it. I have insurance which is covering that, but I do have to pay a hefty fee for the overnight stay. That's ok, I can cover it.

What about all the people in this country who can't? What about all of them who don't have the insurance or couldn't cover the part that insurance doesn't cover? Nobody got surgery for millions of years but now some of us do. Now I do. But what about them? What happens to them?

I got through school and got a job. What about those who didn't, or couldn't? Maybe just by the luck of who they were born to or where they grew up, they didn't have the opportunities I had or didn't know they had them. Maybe they didn't have the same skills as me. But maybe they have other skills, other abilities. It's not too hard to imagine that, but those skills don't get them what I have. Maybe they don't have skills for whatever reason, but they're just doing the best they can, working through each day to the best of their abilities. Maybe they have a family to feed but not a boss that will tell them to sit the fuck down and get better. Or can't. Why don't they get what I've got? What's wrong with them, or what's so special about me?

In this country, people get the care they need. Some people. The rest, they can pay for that care or the other things those some people get. They get austerity, some people get tax breaks. Some people have skills that are "marketable," but is that our only measure of someone's worth? Is the official religion of the US, the all-mighty dollar, our only way of deciding who gets help and who doesn't?

And who the fuck are Republicans to say that some get help, the rest don't? Who the fuck are they to say the rest didn't want help or care, or that the measly bread crumb thrown to them, which Republicans pared down as much as they could or sent to "some" as tax breaks, were only helping late night comedians? Who the fuck are they to say the rest are all going to suffer a lot more unless the rest of those bread crumbs are taken away?

So, I'm lucky, but austerity will creep its way up to be next. But these are the "death panels," with their shiny new talking points and lofty rhetoric that amounts to what "some" deserve, after the shine rubs off. It's up to the rest of us to cut THEM.