Health Plans

Here in Oklahoma City summer has blinked. The searing heat has broken
(for at least a little while). The first, cool nights have happened.
The autumn and winter constellations are in the late night/early
morning sky. And I can say, with some confidence, that what didn't
kill me (congestive heart failure) has made me stronger.

I am old enough and experienced enough to know this is often not true.
What doesn't quite manage to kill ya often succeeds in totally
crippling ya, totally messing ya up. When I left the hospital back in
early June, I knew there was a distinct possibly that this was going
to be the case with me. I knew there was a distinct possibility the
rest of my life was to be a foreshortened, sickly, pill-taking thing.

And yet, it doesn't seem to be the case (except for the pill-taking).

When I left Saint Anthony's, people in the hospital's business office
strongly advised that I immediately apply for Social Security
disability benefits, which include Medicare coverage. I dutifully
filled out the applications, had appointments at the local Social
Security offices (which have been relocated as a result of the federal
building being blown up in 1995), did all that was required in the
bureaucratic process, wondered if the government really wanted to help
me.

Then I got this letter from the government that essentially said I was
a bum and I should get a job.

The letter, pretty much, said there was nothing physically prohibiting
me from doing the work that I've been doing, pretty much, all my adult
working life - being a free-lance, self-employed, newspaper reporter.

Except for the fact that ya have a better chance finding a job
manufacturing buggy whips, than writing for newspapers, I think the
government's conclusion about me has some truth to it.

St. Anthony's Hospital and my cardiologist while I was at St.
Anthony's are sending me bills. Bills that, I'm pretty sure, I won't
be able to pay in this lifetime and probably not in the next.

I walk at least three miles a day and walk as many as ten miles in a
day, with some of those miles being walked in the furnace heat that
Oklahoma City summers are famous for. And during these walks I sweat,
and I meditate on my personal and our national dysfunctional
narrative/discussion about health care.

The bottom line is that no one should die in these United States of
America if they don't have money or insurance. And no one in these
United States of America should have to go broke because they get sick
or get hurt.

And yet, in the end, we all must take personal, imaginative
responsibility for our own healing.

I'm not talking callousness, lack of compassion towards the other. I'm
not talking about the placement of blame on people for creating a
reality, being the author of circumstances in which they get sick or
hurt - an attitude that seems to be intrinsic to many new age
philosophies, an attitude often held by the young and the healthy.

Until recently, I too thought I was bulletproof.

During the discussion of the Hillary Clinton health plan in 1993-94 I
tried to be interested. But my personal health plan (when I was
wounded or sick I would find a cool, dark place, lick my wounds, and
be healed, or die) was still working.

I've been much more interested in the current, national health care discussion.

And I have a new personal health plan.

Don't look on your advancing years as things that will inevitably
cause physical, and mental diminishment.

See your advancing years as agencies, as opportunities that will allow
you to unleash greater, and further powers.

Let your heart always beat with acceptance of whatever the moment
brings, always beat with love, compassion and acceptance of your
fellow human beings.

Resonate with the universe, so the universe can resonate with you.

And in the words of that great, late philosopher and soul brother,
James Brown - "I feel good."