I’m Dr. James Veltmeyer. I came to America alone at the age of eleven when my mother decided that the only way I could have a better life would be to leave my nation of birth, Ecuador, and come to live with extended family in greatest nation on earth. The hunger, deprivation, and homelessness that I experienced in Ecuador only made me appreciate my new country even more.
Realizing the American Dream and climbing the ladder of opportunity in the U.S. allowed me to attain my life’s ambition of helping others as a physician. Little did I know how much the cancer of government control, regimentation, and socialism that I saw growing up in the streets of South America had taken over our own health care system, once the finest in the world. I learned that not just as a doctor treating others, but I saw that cancer invade my own household (bothmetaphorically and in reality).
Let me explain:
In 2015, my wife Laura was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her five-year long and counting battle with this dreaded disease and our personal experience with the worst aspects of government-run health care ( i.e., Obamacare ) sparked my desire to inform and educate the American public about the issues discussed in these commentaries and essays and to become involved in the political process, including as a Republican nominee for U.S. Congress in 2016. Laura’s battle with cancer ( which has subsequently metastasized to the lungs, brain and other tissues ) now requires experimental drug treatments and daily chemotherapy. This might not have happened had the axis of government and giant health insurers not come together under the Affordable Care Act to veto necessary early diagnostic testing at a stage when the cancer might have been stopped in its tracks. As a doctor, I was fortunate to have access to medical resources probably unavailable to many others – including leading oncologists. Yet, under the Obamacare regime, the expert advice of medical professionals is often overruled and approval denied for expensive, life-saving testing or treatments. This is what happened to my wife as she was denied – over and over again— for necessary tests and treatments despite our paying some of the highest premiums for the best policies on the market.! It is a miracle that she is still alive today and we pray that her current treatments will be successful.
While the plurality of these essays do indeed discuss health care and the pandemic, many others address the other serious issues inextricably tied to what is happening in our country today, a nation torn by division, hostility, hatred and violence where our people seem to no longer share the fundamental values that gave birth to our free republic.