BY SHARON MARTIN

Here I am in my 60s, dealing with post-polio, and working fulltime. I have insurance. If I lived in almost any other industrialized country, I’d be working part-time, concentrating on dealing with a crippling disease, and allowing another deserving worker to have my full-time job and full-time paycheck.

But I live in America, land of the crappy Congress.

Most of our legislators don’t give a fig about the folks back home they swore to serve. It’s the money they bow to.

If they cared for anything other than for our votes, we would all have access to quality healthcare, poverty would be the only war worth fighting, and laborers and public servants alike would be revered members of society.

When I get to thinking I’d be better off in another country, I remind myself that I need to stand and fight injustice, the kind a teacher confronts every day.

I’m old. I’m crippled. All I have are my outrage and my voice.

And I’m fighting mad about the ObamaCare rollout.

I’m not mad about the low enrollment numbers or even the shaky website. I’m mad that our representatives are working so hard to kill ObamaCare.

Republican governors realized they could undermine the ACA by refusing to expand Medicaid. They said they couldn’t afford it, although much of the cost was borne through federal taxes that are paid by the people of this state.

Gov. Mary Fallin gave our millions to another state. Meanwhile, she collects canned goods for the hungry in Oklahoma, many of whom will remain uninsured.

Republicans have done everything in their power to stop the Affordable Care Act. What if they had worked as hard to fix its problems, to see to it that the people they serve have access to quality, affordable healthcare?

While they work overtime to sabotage the ACA, their minions do their job by pointing out flaws, both real and imagined.

“See,” they say, “I told you it was a bad idea.”

The bad idea is letting self-serving politicians get away with doing harm to the American people, denying us access to affordable healthcare, and playing games with the country’s economy.

When are voters going to wake up and see that they are being scammed, not by ObamaCare, but by the politicians who are intent on killing it for their own political purposes?

– Sharon Martin lives in Oilton, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer