Letter to the Editor

Your view: Help little people

Wednesday, August 9, 2006

To Mrs. JoAnn Emerson,

This letter is to let you know how I and so many other people feel.

I know that I get a lot more money than a lot of people do, my income after working all of my life is $8,282.40 before deductions. After holding out Medicare premiums of $938.40 in 2005.

I'm a widow in bad health. When my husband died in 2003, the same day I buried my mother, I was really stressed out. But I found out that I could draw a widow's pension of $7,404 which is a total of $14,748 after deductions, which to me I thought was good money.

But to have a place to live, car, electric, gas, food, clothes, doctor bills, hospital bills, you don't have any money. Now I have infected gums and teeth, that I can't find anyone to pull or cut out unless I have the money up front. I scraped $140 up for consultation. So now I have to have $2084 up front. Because I have serious heart trouble, they are afraid to touch me. I hurt so bad.

My sister has diabetes. She has worked pretty well all her life, too. She draws $700 and something a month. She tries to help her sick kids, she has three of them. Where do we get gas money to go back and forth to doctors and hospitals? One daughter has to go three times a week.

We just can't make it and like I said, if you can't help your own, why do we keep giving big raises to the people in the government when us little people are trying to feed our family?

There is nothing wrong in helping other countries if you take care of your own first. We have people starving to death right here in the United States and people dying because they can't afford medicine or get in a hospital. People worry about not getting a $100,000 raise in the White House? We worry about getting a fifty-cent raise.

Everything goes up like gas, electric, house payments, food, doctors, hospitals, cars, gas. Except the money.

Please help all of us. The little people.

Edith M. Boyd

Charleston, Mo.