The Times They Are A-Changin' (Health Care Reform NOW!)

I was changing the Bob Dylan-inspired "Robbin' Bob" lyric and picture that's near the end of this blog a little while ago. I decided to use a snippet of The Times They Are A-Changin'--specifically the lyric warning senators and congressmen against standing in the doorway and blocking up the halls. That lyric got me thinking about the health care debate currently raging in Washington, and the urgency of effective, public-option health care reform legislation.

Bob'll do that to me.

Anyway, I thought that I'd leave much of the structure of the lyrics intact--the foundation--and rewrite it a bit from a health care reform angle. I think it's the most important domestic public policy issue in the country today, and it has been for decades.

With apologies to Bob Dylan, who I hope would understand...

The Times They Are A-Changin' (Health Care Reform Now!):

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

Your doctor says that tumor in your chest

It has grown

And accept it that soon

It'll spread to your bones.

If your time to you

Is worth savin'

Fight for your health care

You won't be alone

For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and bloggers

With your keyboards and pens

Give voice to our side

The chance won't come again

And don't give up too soon

For the wheel's still in spin

Your diagnosis, your doctor

Is still namin'.

For if we lose now

We never will win

For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway

Don't block up the hall

They're sick and they're hurt

And it's you who have stalled

The uninsured are outside

And they're ragin'.

It'll soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'.

There are mothers and fathers

Throughout the land

Doctor bills left 'em broke

Don't you understand?

Their sons and their daughters

Are now sick and out of hand

Their dead-end road is

More of a cagin'.

Reform is the key

Please take a stand

For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn

Indecision's curse it is cast

Congress is slow

It needs to act fast

As the present now

Will later be past

Hope and change is brief

And rapidly fadin'.

And the First Family now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin'.