Sample Letter to e-mail, fax or write your Representatives in Congress

 

The form and space provided for contacting your representatives can be found at:

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
 
Subject: Taking Better Care of our Veteran

WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT FOR RETURNING WOUNDED VETERANS BY VOTING YES TO BILL NO._____________IN THE NEXT CONGRESS
 
The iBOT Mobility System is the answer for many of our wounded veterans.

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

Our Warriors Deserve Better - They Deserve the Best

Our country has long vowed to provide our returning soldiers with the very best medical care available; however, the most technologically advanced ‘wheelchair’, the iBOT Mobility System is no longer available to our country’s most deserving citizens. Wounded veterans who were previously able to obtain an Ibot are also no longer able to do so, and the situation must be changed.

At this time America is served by an all volunteer military. The men and women who enlist agree to go anywhere our government asks them to go, to carry out and protect our nation’s interest, no matter the personal danger. Our country has asked them to risk their lives to protect those of us at home and our nation's legitimate interests abroad.

Inventor Dean Kamen once witnessed a young disabled veteran attempting to navigate a shopping mall in his wheelchair. The chair was unable to mount the curb outside the mall, and, even after he managed to enter, our veteran could not reach up to pick items off shelves and struggled to place an order at a food court counter. This was one of the experiences that moved Kamen to spend over a decade, in partnership with Johnson & Johnson, Independence Technology, to develop the iBOT. And Kamen made no profit on the sales of Ibots to the military.

You probably know Dean Kamen as the inventor of the Segway, which ironically he invented after the iBOT, because it was so simple to do after 10 years of Research and Development of a the exceptionally engineered iBOT device. Mr. Kamen of DEKA Research also holds over 400 plus patents, one you might be very familiar with is the portable Insulin pump, which has revolution the quality of care for diabetics. DEKA research seeks to either improve medical care and thus to improve the lives of those afflicted with disease or injuries.

Bill, # ______ in the 110th Congress this past year, which would have authorized Medicare and Medicaid payments for the iBOT did not pass.

This year,a new Bill is being introduced to permit our VA and any non-profit, such as America’s Huey091 Foundation or others willing to pay for such a device to again provide Ibot Mobility Systems to our returning disabled veterans, but it will only happen with your help.

The iBOT can offer the means to a meaningful, productive and potential financial more independent life for our returning wounded veterans, enabling them to again be productive participatory members of our society.

Past Ibot recipients’ have had a measure of their pre-wounded lives restored. Ibot equipped veterans and others can get anyplace an able bodied person can go without the need for special accommodations. They can do more, be more productive at work, return to school, get around at home with their families and friends, even a simple task such as reaching groceries from a shelf above seating level is possible without help, and thus they can be restored to a much greater measure of the life they once had before they volunteered for military service. And their family members freed of having to provide so much assistance can be more productive also.

• The Ibot allows a paralyzed or amputated user to "…go where no man has gone before." At least to go where no other wheelchair or power chair user has ever gone before, returning both greater independence and dignity to those men and women whose impairment was born out of their selfless service to America.
• An Ibot can climb stairs, it can move on grass, gravel, even sand, and the user can regain equality while sitting and conversing at eye level with a standing 6 ft tall adult. Ask any person in any other wheel chair or power chair what it is like to be diminished in size and emotion by always being seated lower, far beneath the eye level of another adult?
• iBOT recipients’ can also enjoy the simple pleasures and recreation denied to most disabled people, a proven stress reducer. As you have heard many times, a significant number of our returning Veterans also suffer some form of "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder". By providing this device we can help them return to a greater normalcy, to the lives they gave up.

Also, ask any Wheel Chair bound person how the continuous use of their arms and shoulders over time breaks down their muscles and shoulder joints and ultimately impairs the use of their arms. Ultimately, the cost to the people of the United States to repair those further injuries becomes much more significant than the cost of one single iBOT.

What I am asking you to do support legislation to again make the Ibot available to all post 9/11 veterans who need them (HB #_______), or if not, then for just one week, and only at work, I ask that you simply stay seated in your desk chair, and just for a week. 

When you need to: go the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, go to lunch or dinner whether in your cafeteria or in a restaurant, attend a meeting - roll yourself there in your chair.

When constituents and other guests come into your office, DON’T stand up to greet them. And, then, after you have done that for just one week, perhaps rethink your decision to support legislation to provide iBOTS to all qualified wounded post 9/11 veterans.

We can’t restore a life taken, but we can help restore the quality of life lived.

See and Listen to what an iBOT recipient has to say:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjAVqXyRD5s

Respectfully,

Your constituent, your voter, your taxpayer.