Pravus_Belua

The same genius, I suspect, that decided the Mojave Desert was a good place to raise a ginger (me). My father.

Thanks, dad.

Indeed it is, though I simply referred to it as hell.

On another note, I'm sorry people seem to be downvoting you for not knowing something. Catch 22, if you don't know something you're called ignorant but If you alleviate your ignorance you get trashed for not having known sooner.

I find it interesting, perhaps a bit telling, that this question remains unaddressed by the Representative.

This, despite the fact that he hasn't declared the AMA to be at an end, and that he has addressed other talking points since this question was posted 3 hours ago.

Representative Dyer, this question is a valid concern and relevant to a greater amount of people than one might imagine. According to a survey dated December 2015, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, approx 63% of American could be accurately described as "One paycheck away from the street," with the majority of respondents saying they have less than $500-$1,000 in savings should an emergency expense present itself.

As a formerly-homeless child I know full well how much larger the homelessness/poverty problem is than people would like to believe. People like to believe that it can't happen to them, that they're insulated from it somehow. The reality is it can happen to almost anyone, and seemingly overnight. The only thing that happened to cause my family to become homeless was the death of my father. He was a sole earner for the family, and without him we lost everything virtually overnight.

I also know full well how vital some of those government programs are in helping resolve this issue, as under-funded as they are. Without some of those programs I would have gone hungry on more nights that I already was. You can point to charity organizations all you want, but the reality of it is-is that what few there are-are already strapped. So much so that at one of the shelters we found you weren't even given assistance unless you could find a company to sponsor you. We were fortunate in that we got a 1-month sponsorship from a national business. When it came up for review a month later, it was revoked and back to the street we went.

It didn't mater that my mother had two children, 10 and 8 years old. It didn't matter that she had satisfied every requirement of the sponsorship (job seeking), it didn't matter that it was the middle of winter. It didn't matter that we had literally nothing but the clothes on our back. The money just wasn't there, so we were told.

I am not a resident of NH, but I am an American. This is not just a NH issue, this is a national issue that has gone seemingly ignored by Washington/Local elected officials for far too long.

Please, do not ignore this question or the issue surrounding it. As you are an elected official who calls taxation theft, and believes in restricting government to only the essentials, your constituents deserve to have your answer in this. They deserve to know how you feel in regards to whether or not a system they paid into in good-faith will, or will not, be there for them should they sadly find themselves in the same situation I was in.

---

Edit: Forgot to cite my source for the survey data.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-are-one-paycheck-away-from-the-street-2016-01-06

I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to piggyback onto your comment. The one you replied to, the one I was replying to, was deleted by its poster before I could finish. If I may, I'm going to attach my reply below. Even if he ends up not reading it, I feel it's an important story to tell.

To those wondering, the comment that's since been deleted said he doesn't believe in universal healthcare. His 'justification' for that was suggesting people go to Walmart late and night and look at the customers. That since they "can't be bothered to change their pajamas in four days," then certainly they don't deserve healthcare.

As for my reply:

---

Fuck you. Just truly, fuck you. To sit here and read what you just said fills me with a rage that is beyond description.

Let me tell you why.

My mother. When I was 15 years old she had a massive heart attack. An event so destructive that she ended up in the coronary ICU for 7 weeks, followed by 2 months of physical therapy, and a final 2 weeks in a nursing home. By the time it was all over she'd had 14 surgeries, including the installation of a pacemaker, a quintuplet bypass, removal of her sternum (infection), and attempted vascular reconstruction of her leg following prolonged blood loss due to a clot they missed. That was only partially successful and she was left permanently disabled.

Nothing for her, or us, was ever the same again. She was on a slew of medications, blood thinners, pressure regulators, etc. for the rest of her life. Some of them requiring frequent testing to check for further organ damage (liver). Appointment, after appointment, it never stopped.

She was physically disabled, had near zero energy, and her quality of life was far form what it had been.

Once she was finally home the bills started to poor on. One after another, after another, after another. By the end of it the tally was just short of $1,000,000. A million fucking dollars. We were not a rich family to begin with, but this was far beyond our means.

She'd had-had a job. A husband. Two minor kids who still depended on her. She'd done what she was supposed to, she'd played by the rules society had set. None of that mattered. This was pre-ACA and once the insurance company had paid only what they were obligated to, and even then only to "the cap," we were still left holding a substantial amount of debt.

They eventually took her to court over it and tried to get whatever else they could that way. It ultimately lead to bankruptcy. In the end all she was left with was a disability check that barely covered her house payment, much less food, utilities, and unending medical bills.

Everything was lost, in the end even her home.

By that time I was grown and had my own place. She ended up moving with my partner and I where we cared for her during her final years.

She was my mother, my best friend, and one of the best people I'd ever known. To see her not only go through the physical hell of this, and survive, but then to see it destroy her emotionally as everything she'd worked for was taken away. To hear her crying at night over not knowing how she was going to care for me and my sister.

Nobody, nobody, deserves to be ruined by medical crisis. Not one person, not an entire family, and certainly not a child's stability. NOBODY.

I sincerely hope you never have to go through what we did, but if you do, then perhaps you might begin to understand why our medical system is so terminally flawed.

Allergies and nasal dryness relief, as per the Google.