This past Friday night, I attended a Kansas concert in Greeneville, Tennessee. In case you don't know who the band Kansas is, they are classic rock band whose biggest hit came in the 1970s and include "Dust in the Wind," "Carry on my Wayward Son," and "Point of No Return." I had been asked to attend this concert by my father, who is close friends with the band's bass player, Billy Greer, who is from the same small town in East Tennessee that I am from. I too am acquainted with Billy, and we have even played music together a time or two.
Anyway, I have been to several Kansas concerts over the years, I didn't realize that this was a benefit concert until my wife and I arrived at the show and read the program. The concert was in fact a benefit for well renound, Grammy Award-winning guitarist, Barry Burton, who died recently after a long bout with leukemia.
Mr. Burton had health insurance but his treatment for the leukemia, which included a scheduled stem cell transplant that tragically never took place due to complications that arose during chemotherapy, was deemed by his insurance company to be experimental. As a result his family was left with tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills.
The concert was great. Kansas always puts on a great show. And between the money taken up in ticket sales, and the money made off of items auctioned at the show, which included signed musical instruments from a variety of well known artists including Charlie Daniels, Dolly Parton, Sheryl Crow, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Greg Allman, and Brooks & Dunn, I believe that about $50,000.00 was raised.
However, it is truly a sad day in America, when a man like Barry Burton, who worked his ass off to achieve the success that he had in the music
business, which includes winning a grammy and playing with superstars like Dan Fogelburg, Dolly Parton, Brooks & Dunn, and many more, leaves his family with a pile of debt due to the greed of his health insurance company. While I am glad that the benefit for Mr. Burton was a success, I am saddened by the fact that the benefit was even necessary. After all, Mr. Burton paid his insurance premiums faithfully for years and years only to have that same company turn its back on him during his most urgent time of need.
This story is just another example of why it is so imperative that we defeat John McCain this November. If McCain wins, we will continue to see more and more of these stories as the unregulated health insurance industry continues to make more and more blood money off the American public by increasing insurance premiums at a rate that far exceeds the rate of inflation, by refusing to insure "high risk" persons, and by refusing to pay benefits to the people that they do insure. Both Clinton and Obama are planning to put a stop to this kind of bullshit. As a result, you better believe that the health insurance lobby is going to be going after our nominee as hard as they can regardless of who wins the nomination. That's why we must remember what we're fighting for, and we must not lose sight of the reasons we are waging this campaign. As Obama says, change doesn't come easy. But if we work hard enough, I believe that we can put an end to this kind of bullshit.