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Rhapsody, I’m not trying to be difficult really, I do not think you are understanding my point. The government is providing a phone for the benefit of the household for a specific purpose. It is called “Lifeline” for a reason. It was set up to make emergency and other services available to the needy. The added benefit of being able to use that same tool to have non-essential communication with others is a bonus, nothing more. The odds of the actual need for emergency services can be pretty slim, but they do exist and we cannot in good conscience refuse a person based upon their financial situation. But we do not promise them convenience, especially at the cost of the other members of the family in the household.
Many families that choose to utilize this service DO have small children at home, not yet school age or on summer vacation or after school hours or weekends/holidays (only 35 hours a week are spent in school), and if the phone the government provides to that family for necessity is with mom at the grocery store or work and dad or a babysitter is at home with the kids, they do not have a phone available to them. To the ones left in the household it is like not having a phone at all. Where is their Lifeline to the outside world? Is this not the reason the program was set up to begin with?
What good does is it for my co-worker for example to have her phone in her purse while she’s picking up her daughter’s medicine, diapers, or food if while the child is at home with her babysitter (co-worker’s 18 year old sister. Who gets paid $1 an hour per child more to watch them by the state than if they were in a certified day care) if the child has a seizure while at home? The very reason we gave this woman a phone is so that medical attention can be provided to that child. Now once the babysitter runs down the hill to their Aunt’s house and calls 911, it’s handy that mom can be immediately notified that her daughter is on route to the hospital.
As I said, the only way I can see this program working the way it’s intended, is for the only people eligible for it are single individuals. Even then there are also issues that people making these decisions haven’t really considered. As much as it pains me to say this because the woman I’m talking about is one of the most irresponsible people that I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet, if this program was done on a case by case basis, in my opinion she’d be one of the few people that qualified for a government funded cell phone in addition to the home phone that is so greatly needed.
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I've been married for 24 years and have four wonderful children.
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