I found a "Mormon Left" (www.mormonleft.blogspot.com) blog through a friends blog tonight and the first post that I read I had to comment on and it turned into a book so I thought I would cut and paste that book on to my own blog since this IS my journal. While my thoughts are not complete in this comment, I will always come back to personal responsibility and hard work. And PS it was nicely paragraphed when I pasted in over and even now isn't one ginormous paragraph, but publishes different and I don't know what to do about it. Sorry.

This is quickly becoming a favorite powerful quote for me:

Harold B. Lee's Quote on America

"Men may fail in this country, earthquakes may come, seas may heave beyond their bounds, there may be great drought, disaster, and hardship, but this nation, founded on principles laid down by men whom God raised up, will never fail. This is the cradle of humanity, where life on this earth began in the Garden of Eden. This is the place of the new Jerusalem. This is the place that the Lord said is favored above all other nations in all the world. This is the place where the Savior will come to His temple. This is the favored land in all the world. Yes, I repeat, men may fail, but this nation won't fail. I have faith in America; you and I must have faith in America, if we understand the teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are living in a day when we must pay heed to these challenges.

I plead with you not to preach pessimism. Preach that this is the greatest country in all the world. This is the favored land. This is the land of our forefathers. It is the nation that will stand despite whatever trials or crises it may yet have to pass through."

And here is the response I left on this blog.

So none of you know me. I just found your blog through a friend. I have to say I completely disagree. No, that's not true. I agree that healthcare is a major problem in the United States of America. It IS expensive, no one can argue that. But so is going out to eat, going to a movie, buying a car, having life insurance, having car insurance, owning/renting a home, etc... The problem that I have is no one in our generation thinks that we need to buckle down and figure out tough times. Or that we should have to.

No one wants to give up any of the stuff that I wrote because that's just part of how people live and that would be hard to have to take away those luxuries just to put it toward health insurance. What makes us think that health insurance is a human right? Is having a cell phone a right? cable? Internet? What about a car? A house? You may argue that those are just things, we are talking about people's LIVES!!! I am saying if healthcare means that much to you, which it should, give up everything that isn't necessity and see what you can do...go from there. I just don't think you really can complain until you have done everything you can do.

Insurance companies take advantage. Government has put regulations on insurance so they cannot cross state lines to bring down rates and provide the consumers with good competition between companies. I think when you take capitalism away by shutting down these private companies and give more power to the government, you are going to say good bye to even more of your freedoms.

I am not rich. On the contrary, I am a mother of three and my husband is in school and we live off off school loans and the money he brings in from a part time job. However, taking the road we have has taught me that life is rough and you do what you have to do.

I went to go read the article suggested and could not even get past the first sentence:

"Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world."

Are you talking about South America? I'm pretty sure that we have the best medical system in the world and that is why people come from all over the world to be trained at our schools and why people fly in from all over the world to be treated by the world's BEST doctors? What country do you live in? This is America! Quit complaining and get up and WORK HARDER!!! (Millions of people on welfare are depending on you! Sorry, I just love that bumper sticker!) It's the only country left where you can still have a dream and WORK HARD to achieve it. Please don't let it change. Fight to keep our freedom. God helped our founding fathers set this free nation up and no where did it say that healthcare was a right. I say quit taxing America so stinking much and see how generous people will be when they don't feel like so much money is being stolen from them. I think I can guarantee we will always come out more generous that what the government takes from us.

One more perspective before I get off my soapbox. I am SO grateful for health insurance. While it is expensive and most of the time confusing and frustrating to deal with, I have personal experience with it being wonderful. I have a little brother who has had two brain tumors and is now completely hormone dependent and severely mentally behind and physically handicapped, but thanks to the wonderful training of our medical doctors, is still alive. I have a father who had such a rare cancer that he battled with, and thanks to our wonderfully trained medical doctors, is now the 15th documented person to survive the treatment for that cancer after a bone marrow transplant. Without having the medical insurance that he worked his whole life to have, I would no longer have my little brother, nor would I have a father on this earth. I am so grateful for insurance.

Here is the link to the article that I couldn't get past the first line. If it begins with a line as stupid as that one, it's not worth reading, in my opinion.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29988909/