Uninsured Trail of Tears

Long ago there was such thing as health insurance where a person could pick and choose which package that fit best with their needs. Or they didn't have to choose a package at all. Long ago.

It was the best of times, it was the worse of times, it was the age of suitable health care needs. Each package may have been prejudice, may have been over priced, but it was the world in which we lived in. A world that one day led to dire consequences amongst the uninsured.

For the uninsured applied for government assistance but was denied due to bank account balances reflecting large amounts. However, the government had not seen the bills they've paid which would take every cent they earned. They would have purchased health insurance, if they could afford it.

The rain fell hard upon the day Americans were fined for lack of health insurance. But that rain grew from buckets one year to rivers the next until the amounts climbed astronomical leading to an American health insurance foreclosure forcing the uninsured to sell their property in order to pay their fine. Once their items were sold, the property was gone, the fears forthcoming.

The Uninsured Removal Act began to set in as 46,000 uninsured Americans were driven out of their own land into government approved locations where other uninsured cultural individuals were found. Some gave a fight in gangs but was no match for the U.S. military machinery. The Uninsured Trail of Tears had begun swiftly as soldiers transported the uninsured towards the new destination.

The food rations consisted of only a handful of boiled corn, one turnip, and two cups of hot water daily for that was all the government offered the uninsured. Soon disease began to grow amongst the crowds. The insured Americans were frightened of the uninsured in fear that they would catch a disease. Lack of assistance in this equation resulted in uninsured deaths.

The Uninsured Removal proved deadly and unhealthy as they traveled with the same clothes on their back as some did not even wear shoes to protect their feet during below freezing temperatures.

Once reaching the destination of an uninsured concentration camp most of the uninsured deaths were contributed from additional disease, starvation and cold. A soldier recalled the Uninsured Removal:

"I fought through the War Between the States and have seen many men shot, but the Uninsured Removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."

The only true way that the uninsured did not fall under the Uninsured Removal was if they lived under governed policy to pay for health insurance. But in the uninsured world their rights of certain freedoms always stood taller than the demand.

The Message:

This was a story compiled of the Native American experience during their Trail of Tears. The combination is a perfect example of individual freedom. Once upon a time, in reality, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee-Creek, and Seminole nations were forced to leave their lands under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. They traveled in these conditions, were fed exactly as described, and died many deaths that could have been avoided.

"I fought through the War Between the States and have seen many men shot, but the Cherokee Removal was the cruelest work I ever knew." This phrase was offered through Robert Remini's "The Earth Shall Weep: A history of Native America" by a soldier's experience during that moment in history.

My Cherokee bloodline begins at the end of the Trail of Tears where two full blooded Cherokee sisters met up with an American family. Amira married a man and had 12 children. Four generations later I was born. Amira's parents stood for something they believed in which cost them their lives. But the message was clear. If there is something we have learned from the Indian Removal of 1830 it's let no man of any color divert you from what's important, your freedom of choice.

What will happen if someone refused to pay a health care fine? We will have to see.

Source(s): Judgment Day, PBS; Remini, Robert "Invasion", The Earth Shall Weep: A history of Native America, Grove Press, pg. 170 ISBN 080213680X; Self-Source