Last week I wrote a column about customer service. In this column there was absolutely nothing mentioned about health care, yet a couple of readers chose to make it about health care as they commented on my column. It always baffles me when I read the comment sections in newspapers as to the number of people that turn an article into something else or use it as a forum for their own agenda especially if that agenda is attacking other people and minorities.

So if you want to talk about health care, let’s talk about health care. I can only speak from what I know, and this is what I know and have experienced about my health care.

I know my premiums are double what my mortgage is.

I know those doubled premiums pay for two health insurance policies. One policy has a $10,000 deductable and another has a $5,000 deductable per year.

I know we do not go to the doctor unless we are very broken because we cannot afford the deductibles.

I know I don’t have any toys to give up. Sorry, no boats, no snowmobiles, no fancy vacations. According to one of the online comments after my column “healthy young people will be forced to pay premiums for middle class people so they don’t lose their toys.” Where are the facts to back up that statement?

I have friends who lost their jobs, lost their health insurance, could not afford COBRA and because of a devastating, long-term, chronic disease and their high medical bills, they have now lost their home.

I know of two young families that have lost their jobs, could not afford COBRA, had to move in with their parents and cannot afford health care. What do these families do? They have kids and kids have germs and illnesses.

I know that a few of the people who I have talked to that are against change in the health care system are those who have insurance that is paid for by their workplaces. I know that a few of the people who I have talked to don’t understand ever having to worry about paying a medical bill or being able to go to the doctor.

I have to admit when we had jobs that gave us benefits and medical insurance, I didn’t understand the problem either and felt the same way. If you haven’t experienced a situation or lived it, it is sometimes hard to understand what other people are experiencing.

Here is what I don’t know.

I don’t know if the bill before Congress will fix this.

I don’t know if anyone knows how to fix this.

I don’t know the answers and I doubt that many of you, like me, understand everything that is being done to fix this.

I don’t know why in order to find a resolution, people have to attack another’s opinions. Does attacking someone help us solve anything except to make people madder and put them in an adversarial mood? Does anyone take seriously someone who ridicules and attacks in a cruel and destructive way? If you are the attacker, do you have a better plan and can you present that plan in a way that makes people get on board?

I would be lying if I told you I was not scared that soon we will not be able to pay for our health care and will have to do without. We work hard to keep that from happening, but our premiums keep going up. I am old, but I think of the younger generation that already is going without health care. I think of the younger people who are going to struggle with paying their bills and keeping their family healthy, and I am scared for them.

Fear does strange things to people. Fear makes people lash out and become bitter. Fear makes people attack before they are attacked. I can’t help but wonder if some of the opposition to change is the underlying factor of fear that one day their taxes are going to go up. One day these people might lose their medical coverage and their comfortable lifestyle. Is it fear of change and the fact that this will affect them that make people strike out because of fear that life may have to change?

I don’t know if I am for the changes that Congress is trying to make. I am for trying to change a system that is broken. I am fearful that it is going to stay broken because of all the fighting to be right.

I do believe that if we don’t wake up and find a solution for health care and for homelessness, which is a problem that is growing every day, we will all lose eventually.

We want everything, but we don’t want our taxes to go up. We are afraid we are going to have to pay to help those less fortunate then us, and we want control. We want it right now. We have become a nation of instant gratification and entitlement. Freedoms of speech and of the press allow us to be a nation bordering on rudeness. We will throw the baby under the bus if it means our lifestyle will not change. Because of free speech and free press allowed us in this great nation we don’t do it kindly. We not only throw the baby under the bus, we pelt it with our words.

Perhaps we need to revisit Abraham Lincoln’s words in the Gettysburg Address. What do these words mean for us today?

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate … we cannot consecrate … we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send e-mail to her at thecolumn@bevcomm.net .Her blog is paringdown.wordpress.com. Listen to KBEW AM radio 1:30 p.m. Sundays for “Something About Nothing.”