Cookies, unemployment, and health care

I'll admit it - I'm seriously in the dark when it comes to understanding the recession and I'm even MORE in the dark about the debate around public health care in the U.S. Being a Canadian who has enjoyed easy access to public health care all my life, and never having had to worry about whether we could pay the medical bills (even when finances are tight), I am completely puzzled with how much fear and objection there is to what's being proposed in the U.S. Sure our system's not PERFECT, but at least I didn't have to re-mortgage the house when I ended up in the hospital for three weeks before finally giving birth to our stillborn son Matthew.

For the most part, I can simply ignore the news stories around some of these issues, because it barely touches my life. But when I read stories like this one on a blog I've been frequenting lately (written by a Twitter friend), suddenly the stories begin to feel a little closer to home. It just doesn't make any sense how a wealthy country could deny its own people access to equitable health care.

There's nothing I can do about fixing the system, but there is one small thing I CAN do for a family that's struggling to survive in the face of huge obstacles. I can buy cookies!

I grew up with some of those similar challenges (with incredible parents who struggled to stay afloat financially), so I know what kind of toll poverty can take on a family. When I saw that this family was selling cookies to try to pay the bills, I did the only thing I could - I ORDERED COOKIES! And it turns out that Priority Post delivers cookies across international borders!

You can do it too... order cookies! I barely got a chance to sample the ones that showed up in my house, because my three daughters devoured them like ravenous dogs (you'd think we didn't feed them! yeesh!), but the crumbs they left at the bottom of the box sure tasted yummy.

Just to tempt you further, here's a bonus picture of a Tootsie Roll eating a cookie! (Tootsie Roll costume not included with your order. You'd have to pay me BIG bucks to make another one of THOSE.)