Taking the Lid Off of the Tea Party Movement, One Family Finds 'It's Just Hate'

By GottaLaff

Jennifer and daughter Kylee

I have posted several times about my Twitter pal Midge Hough and her husband Dan. They suffered the devastating loss of their daughter-in-law Jen and her baby as a result of the failure of our abysmal health care system.

Now, in your Daily Dose of BuzzFlash, we have a very touching piece written by one of their best, Meg White:

But when Midge told the story to the people gathered at the town hall meeting, she was jeered, mocked and laughed at. They didn't believe her, or didn't care.[...]

Jenny spent the next 55 days on a respirator. She suffered through a heart attack, two collapsed lungs, partial paralysis, and the delivery of a stillborn daughter. Yet she still fought to survive, trying to talk and smile and get better. She died on Aug. 26, 2009.

Telling this story of horrifying loss was hard enough for Midge, but she was mostly astonished by the group's total lack of compassion:

"How they could not know I was devastated, I'll never know." [...]

Even after a local paper verified the Jenny's story, she hounded the Houghs with hateful e-mails and insisted that their story was an "isolated incident" that shouldn't have any bearing on the healthcare debate.

Midge said she "tried to appeal to her in those ugly, ugly e-mails."

"Could she understand that we were grieving?" Midge recalled asking in one e-mail exchange with Wojtowicz. "She laughed in the e-mail. She said she didn't think they were hard enough on me" at the Lipinski town hall meeting. [...]

Though these fringe tea party activists are using Jenny's story to promote themselves, it doesn't make the Houghs second-guess their decision to bring attention to them. They say they're glad that they can show "people on the fence" about healthcare just how "radical" and "unhinged" the tea party groups can be.

"If my hurting accomplishes that, I'm OK with it," Midge said. [...]

Even before Jenny got sick, the Houghs were working to get her covered.

"We tried everything," Midge said, but no insurance company would cover Jenny's prenatal care. "She had a preexisting condition: pregnancy." [...]

She tells Jenny's story not only to bring attention to the suffering, but to remind people how easily they could find themselves in her shoes.

"It hits you when you'd never expect it," Midge said. "It could happen to anyone."

Much more here. Please read Meg's entire piece.

My previous posts on Midge and Dan's touching and infuriating story:

VIDEO: Tea baggers heckle family mourning loss of mother/unborn child

VIDEOS: Our flawed health care system failed a young mother and her unborn child

VIDEOS: The deadly results of our abysmal health care system