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I am still a little too livid, a little too disappointed, and a little too annoyed at our President right now to go into a rational, logical dissection of what his proposed Health Care Reform Bill - which for some reason unbeknown to me and the majority of America, is a matter of such pressing urgency that the Congress must pass it by the August 1st deadline - that I will just say one thing.

Do your civic duty and write your congress representative. If you agree with the bill, fine. If you don't, fine. But please, please do not let somebody else make the decision for you. We aren't talking about a piece of legislation that proposes new forms of energy which may or may not impact you directly or in the near future. What we are debating, what is on the line is your health - in a very real and literal sense.

You are not a number. You are not just a vote. You are a person. A human being with feelings, personal connections, people who love and depend on you. Don't let somebody else have a say in what you do or do not want. You have to step up and make yourself heard.

And it's easy. I just wrote a quick little email to my district's House representative (whose address I got from his webpage) and it took me a matter of 5 minutes. Five minutes is nothing in the span of one's lifetime - which in this country averages at around eighty years. Eighty years is a long time to regret having kept your mouth shut.

If you want an uneditorialized, unbiased version of the bill - meaning its full version and not just clips of what the media provides - follow this link. On the right hand of the page there will be a side bar entitled "Health Care for America." Below that is a link that will open into a PDF file with the full 1018 pages of the bill.

It's a bear, and you don't have to read it in its entirety. But our legislators - the people whose job it is to do just that - should be held accountable to do so. And they should be given the time for it. Hence, let them know you feel that way.

Oh, and as an aside, I know from years of personal experience that any decent doctor would never, never run a procedure because an insurance code says it will pay him or her more money.  People have no idea just how much physicians in this country give and work so that others can have a healthy, happy life. And for our president - the man who represents all of us - to come out and vilify them with a petty, below-the-belt slandering of a hypothetical doctor's thought process in order to get the American people to support such a weighty issue, that just is insulting, hurtful, and wrong.

But, more on what he had to say say later.