If health care isn't a right, is dying?

A supervisor sent me an email asking me if it was going to just be me on my insurance policy, or if my husband will be on the policy as well. I let her know that he is already insured through his employer. I was going to make a joke about it just being me and the dog needing insurance, but then I remembered that our dog IS insured. I live in a home where the only uninsured
individual, including pets, is me.

So, how does that happen? When we moved and my husband switched jobs, his new plan was cost prohibitive for me to join. It would have cost me two unemployment checks just to be added to his policy. That is how someone becomes uninsured.

I feel like there's a myth in this country that the uninsured are crackheads, criminals, drug-dealers, lazy people, women with eight different kids by eight different baby daddies, or people who are just generally working the welfare system. I've heard a lot of rhetoric lately about the uninsured, and I find a lot of it offensive. In fact, the uninsured are people like me. I am one. You could meet me anywhere - neighborhood association meeting, dog park, the Gap, church...pretty much any normal place except on a corner making drug deals. I'm hard-working, educated, and don't want to be uninsured or underinsured.

So what would I like? Standards put in place for medical costs. Everyone has coverage. If there's a fear that universal, government-run heath care will create over-usage of the system, fine, keep co-pays in place. But I don't deserve to die, and another to live, simply because of the type of job I have or don't have. That's crazy. This is America, people.