PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, pt2: FAMILY TRAUMA

Illness defines family trauma over time and it’s exhausting.

Remember the movie Ordinary People?

The family dynamic wasn’t defined by illness, but death of a child.

It didn’t go well for the emotional state of all.

There’s was a sudden adjustment with a lifetime effect.

Living with a pre-existing condition, or around others with pre-existing conditions like chronic illness, now come under scrutiny.

Every day grows a little darker for these people who need a sense of mercy.

And who offers to help?

Rep. Mo Brooks from Alabama steps forward with this opinion:

“My understanding is that (the new proposal) will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool. That helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now, those are the people — who’ve done things the right way — that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.”

How does this rhetoric help calm family trauma around a sick person in the house?

I asked one of my friends with a pre-existing condition, and 83 year old Marine raised in Utah, what he made of such a statement.

“He sounds like a Galvanized Mormon, dipped once and good for life,” he said.

Then he went on to explain how a soldier he knew, a newlywed, received blessing from LDS officials before shipping out to Europe for WWII.

“They told him if he lived the right way he would be safe in war.”

He took a random shot to his head on the Normandy beaches and died, leaving a wife to wonder what God awful thing he had to have done to earn that bullet.

Doing things the right way doesn’t guarantee good health, or safety on the beaches of D-Day.

Wiki lends a hand to get the bottom of Mo Brooks position:

Brooks joined the LDS Church in 1978, and though he still attends Mormon services with his wife, he considers himself a non-denominational Christian.

Why would an Alabama Mormon go off on people with poor health?

Health care is one of many hot buttons for Mo Brooks.

The difference between white and black family trauma?

On August 4, 2014 Brooks went on The Laura Ingraham Show and Ingraham played Brooks a clip of Ron Fournier warning that the Republican Party could not survive as the “party of white people.”

Brooks responded: “Well, this is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party… And the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else. It’s part of the strategy that Barack Obama implemented in 2008, continued in 2012, where he divides us all on race, on sex, creed, envy, class warfare, all those kinds of things.”

The comment drew considerable comments and controversy. When asked about the comment later that day, Brooks repeated the claim of a war on whites, stating: “In effect, what the Democrats are doing with their dividing America by race is they are waging a war on whites and I find that repugnant.”

Two days after the original comment, Brooks expanded also stated that the Republican Party was involved in a war on whites.

What else does Mo Brooks find repugnant?

Brooks has sponsored or cosponsored 112 immigration-related bills since taking office in January 2011. Brooks also has stated that he feels Congress will probably do nothing about illegal immigration in the coming years.

On June 29, 2011, in an interview with reporter Venton Blandin of WHNT-TV, Brooks was asked by Blandin to repeat what he had previously stated at a town hall meeting about illegal immigrants. Brooks repeated his previous statement, saying, “As your congressman on the House floor, I will do anything short of shooting them. Anything that is lawful, it needs to be done because illegal aliens need to quit taking jobs from American citizens.”

Mo Brooks makes campaign promises that resonate in Alabama enough to stay in office.

Brooks opposes abortion and any stem cell research that uses human embryos. Brooks co-sponsored the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which would have ended federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

He’s a man with conviction.

Brooks is opposed to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and has said that the committee that passed it didn’t understand it. He signed the Club for Growth’s “Repeal-It!” pledge that stated that upon his election to Congress that he would “sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government.”

He was also endorsed by the website Defundit.org for his stance on the health care reform bill. Brooks co-sponsored H.R. 127, which would have removed all funding from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, and any amendments made by either act.

In March 2017, Brooks said that he would not vote in support of the American Health Care Act, the GOP’s initial plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. Brooks said, “I will vote against the American Health Care Act because it has more bad policy than any bill I have ever faced.”

But on May 4, 2017, Brooks voted to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and pass the American Health Care Act.

Mo Brooks and I are the same age but with different takes on family trauma.

Men of good faith see the need in pre-existing conditions and start there, not review a life and declare it unworthy.

After consulting with my mentors Larry, Curly, and Shemp, the answer is clear.

Mo is a stooge for interests other than making a better America.

One lingering question: Why is he ashamed of being Mormon like it’s a pre-existing condition to hide?

Maybe another dip in the galvanizing tank would clear things up.

I know Alabama people, Alabama families, and they don’t sound like Mo Brooks.