Dear Congress:

I want my antibiotic. As you game the American public through semantics and wrestle in back rooms to ensure the right pockets are lined in a weak attempt to put forth a health care bill—both government protected industries and those of you lining your own pockets with congressional payoffs—I want you to remember me and the millions of other Americans who, when we get ill, can’t afford to pay cash to see a physician or pay for simple x-rays or blood work just to receive an antibiotic. We are denied the most basic of humane care. We are the fly-over America who you think are so stupid.

We struggle with everyday illness, in pain, and in desperate need of simple medical treatment as you hold out false promises of repealing Obamacare. And to all of you bleeding heart progressives screaming over Medicaid cuts. Let’s think about who is the beneficiary of these benefits. It’s not people like me who have a full-time job. I am not an illegal immigrant, a black mother of four on welfare, or a drug addict with four children by four different fathers. No, I have a job, but your tax policies, inflation, and crippling debt has kept me poor just the same.

I struggle to make my rent, pay my energy bill, and have enough money leftover to buy food. I don’t receive SNAP or get a housing subsidy. There is no money left over in my budget to pay the exorbitant federal monthly premiums for a national health system I didn’t ask for and I don’t want. And frankly, why would I? With deductibles as high as $5,000 for an individual, I’ll take my chances. Why should I be forced to eat beans and rice each month to pay for insurance  I can’t afford to use. Let me explain to you fat cats in Congress that $5,000 to a person of little means might as well be $5 million. And people like me are legion. A recent study reported on in the media said that almost all Americans have NO savings. Let that sink in.

And then there is the tax penalty I am forced to come up with at the end of the year. That’s the real kick in the teeth. After I have struggled through the Christmas holidays to just survive and purchase a few gifts for my grandchildren, I am then forced to employ ever more poverty surviving techniques as I work to come up with funds to pay the tax penalty just so I can do my American duty and file a tax return, where I usually owe you even more money.

And what of the illegal immigrants and welfare parents? Their running to the tax man as fast as they can carry that W-2 to file a return where, provided they have a few children, they can expect their returns to be $3,000 to $5,000. There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this system. No, these people get a second Christmas from the Washington Santa Claus at my expense.

I am and always will be a proponent of giving a helping hand to those in need, but when I see people who are neither a citizen of my country sucking off the teet of my lifetime of hard labor or single mothers who make poor choices by having multiple children by multiple fathers out of wedlock being rewarded with government goodies, I feel cheated, used and angry. It’s not me or those like me who you see driving around in shiny black Escalades with rims wearing designer clothes.

I am the face of the forgotten America Trump speaks of. As you wring your hands over our deplorable “values,” as you driver us further into despair that we will ever crawl out of our holes of mere survival, as you pamper and pet the worst within our society with benefits not earned or even entitled to, you betray me. You betray us. As you pontificate in front of cameras while making backroom deals with industry lobbyist for the pharmaceutical and health industries, as Speaker Ryan sticks it to us in every conceivable way he can by blocking any real relief to those of us suffering in this system, I want you to remember me. I want you to know I am watching. America is watching. And I want my antibiotic or I want out.