April Knight: MICHELE BACHMANN, TIM PAWLENTY, ET AL, WANT ME TO DIE!

The health care reform bill passed through the House last night. Most of us were thrilled. This legislation has been a long, long time coming. The Republicans hate that it passed. Now Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty and other Minnesota Republicans want to make this legislation illegal, or unconstitutional, or some such thing, in Minnesota. In Minnesota, which has always been a state that cared about the poor, the downtrodden, the helpless, the sick, the infirm, the disabled and the homeless.

Let's take a look at my own case for a moment. As most readers know who have been following my blogs, I have hepatitis C. I've had it since 1969 and now my liver is cirrhotic. At this point it's still well compensated, but that won't last forever. Within a few years it could become decompensated. Then I would be on the way to a liver transplant. Before the transplant, while the liver is growing more and more useless, I would be unable to work. This state of disability could last for six months, a year...who knows?

One must be disabled and unable to work for two years before Medicare kicks in. That would be two years without insurance. I had resigned myself to not being able to afford a transplant and to not having insurance at that point. No biggie; I'm not afraid to die. To quote Charlotte Bronte, "No coward soul is mine."

Still, one wishes to live if at all possible. Imagine how wonderful I found last night's news regarding health care reform. I would be able to still have insurance. I would be able to have a liver transplant when it became necessary.

Now Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty and their cohorts want to try to take that away from me? And not only me, but countless others with such diseases as AIDS, cancer, liver disease and a host of other potentially fatal maladies.

Did you know that without insurance, the out-of-pocket cost of treatment medications (interferon and ribavirin) for hepatitis C is thousands of dollars per month? Do the Teabaggers really want all these people to die because they don't have health insurance? Many Teabaggers claim to be Christians. What a joke. If they would but look in their own Bibles, they would read about this guy named Jesus who said, "Whatsoever you do unto the least of these my brethern, ye do it unto me." You can see where that line of reasoning will go next. Shame on the Teabaggers. Shame on Michele Bachmann. Shame on Tim Pawlenty. I think we have some dastardly hypocrites in Minnesota, folks. And it's not us Democrats. It's those darn Teabaggers.

I have to agree with Mark Dayton on this one. (No, we don't see eye to eye on everything, but we do on this.) Pawlenty's administration and policy is evil. He can vocalize what that means better than I can. Watch the AFSME on the Hill video of Dayton's speech, then applaud him for his passion and courage in speaking up in such an exhilerating manner.