Health insurance seems important for Vice-President Dick Cheney. Why should anyone in America have less of a choice about his/her health care than this man? How might Dick Cheney’s life be different if he were one of the many tens of millions without health care coverage in this nation? I wonder if at this stage of Dick Cheney’s life he stops to ponder what good he could have done in government to affect change for the uninsured? Does Dick Cheney have pangs of real guilt? I think not as having remorse, feelings of guilt, or just common sense about the right thing to do takes a heart……and now we know for sure that is not Dick Cheney’s strong point.
I have even stronger feelings about Dick Cheney than I do about President George Bush. The former president was not smart enough to make the correct decisions, but Dick Cheney did. Cheney was mentally able to see right from wrong, and knew how to pull the strings of government to make the calls that could have made a difference.
Instead of making for a better path for his fellow citizens who were not as well off as he was Cheney instead strove always to take an ever harder and more strident conservative path.
As such there is no sympathy that can be extended for a man like this.
Mr. Cheney’s heart will never beat at full strength again, doctors say. His new mechanical pump, a partial artificial heart known as a ventricular assist device, leaves patients without a pulse because it pushes blood continuously instead of mimicking the heart’s own beat. Most pulse-less patients feel nothing unusual, but the devices do pose significant risks of infection. They are implanted as a last resort either for permanent use or as a bridge to transplant until a donor heart can be found. Mr. Cheney, who has participated in some of the nation’s toughest decisions for decades, now faces a crucial one of his own: whether to seek a full heart transplant.
It is a decision he will most likely be forced to make within months. He is old enough that soon he will no longer qualify for a transplant, doctors say. And while it is possible for some patients with Mr. Cheney’s device to live for years, the long-term prospects remain unknown.
His family and friends will not talk publicly with any specificity about the former vice president’s heart condition or the steps he might be taking to confront it.
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 