The Real Death Panels

Last night, I made a trip to the pharmacy to pick up the medications that, well, keep me alive. I left, instead, empty handed because I could not afford my medications. My insurance had changed its plan on me, so that it no longer paid $2,000 per semester for medications, but rather, $2,000 per year. As someone with a chronic illness, that is absolutely nothing. Had I paid for my medications last night–Advair, Singulair, and Allegra–I would’ve been less more than $400. As I walked back home, I pondered my options. I couldn’t beg my parents for money every month. They can’t afford to pay that much every month, either. I once looked into a prescription program through the state, but I wasn’t eligible because I’m not a legal resident of the state I live in now. It occurred to me on this trip home that insurance companies were the real death panels. It was they who really decided who was to live and who was to die. Because I have severe asthma and allergies requiring medications to keep my airways open, and therefore cost my insurance a lot of money each month, I was marked for death. My previous insurance did this to me once, too, after a concussion. They refused to pay for my doctor visits because it was an accident, then raised my bill, first, by $15 a month, then by $40. My mother canceled her own insurance in order to afford this. When she developed degenerative disks in her back last year, she had no insurance to cover her medications or doctor bills, so she initially refused treatment for months because she knew she couldn’t afford it. She was in too much pain to drive, dress, or bathe herself, and her emails to me began to contain hints of suicide after my father was diagnosed with cancer.

How is it that we praise our country as such a free, democratic society, when our citizens cannot afford their own medications? Did my ancestors fight against what they saw as British tyranny so that, over two-hundred years later, I could slowly begin going into respiratory arrest the same way that my grandpa, who had the same insurance, died? Do we, like Nathan Hale once famously stated, each day regret that we have but one life to give for our system of government that allows our citizens to die for lack of affordable health care?

And why don’t we have affordable health care, anyway? Each day of the Iraq war costs the US $720 million–that’s $500,000 per minute on war, imperialism, and death in the Middle East. That money could be used to provide 163,525 people health care every day. Every day? That’s enough to provide health care for everyone in the United States that needs it. Why must our tax dollars be spent on death, and not life? The Declaration of Independence declares that all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Where is my right to life if I cannot afford my medications, and how can I be free to live my life or be happy if I am sick? America needs a new system of health care that would ensure the wellness of all people. Instead of protesting an unborn child’s right to life, why not demand the right to life of the already born?

The War on Health Care

Recently, much media attention has been dedicated to the Genitalia Bomber and subsequent new security plans.  Meanwhile, 45,000 Americans are dying every year due to lack of insurance.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama was fiery when he made his public statement after meeting with his national security team about the airline breach: In seeking to thwart plans to kill Americans “we face a challenge of the utmost urgency,” he said. He talked about reviewing systemic failures and declared we must “save innocent lives, not just most of the time, but all of the time.”

This is all very admirable. Imagine if this same urgency was applied to a broken system that causes 45,000 unnecessary deaths per year. Since stimulus funds will now be directed to supply more scanning equipment at airports, what about spending money to ensure mammograms and prostate exams at community health centers?

Sing it, Amy Goodman. Sing it. Why do some, such as the Tea Baggers, focus so much energy on terrorism when even more Americans are dying from lack of affordable health care?

“It’s Passion.”

I find I’m having trouble truly caring about my studies this semester. I find myself weighted down by suddenly irreverent studies. “Why should I read about British furniture fanaticism in the 19th century? Don’t you know there are people dying in Iraq?!” I want to yell at my professors.

My classmates discuss things I suddenly find to be pointless drivel before class: fast food restaurants, shopping, sports, apartment adventures, homework whines. I find myself distanced from them, unable to understand the point of discussing such things. Do you know how many uninsured Americans there are? Do you ponder why Connecticut is the richest state in the country, while Hartford is one of the poorest cities?

I find myself thinking not-so-nice thoughts about classmates who talk about calling the police on neighbors. I find a distance between our realities. In my reality, I walk through the ghettos by myself with schizophrenic old men yelling at me and dirty homeless men following me until I cross the street, and I am unfazed. In my reality, I sometimes have conversations with complete strangers of all different races and economic statuses waiting on the bus or on the bus. In my reality, I buy huge bags of apples for the homeless when I, myself, don’t have a job right now. In my reality, a homeless man with a buggy full of ramen noodles boards my bus and I want to cry because that’s all he can afford to eat. In my reality, I once walked across our campus with a rainbow flag draped about my back like a cape. In my reality, I start conversations about feminism, peace, racism, tolerance, GLBT rights, religion, and politics with just about everyone I know (including the campus nurse, who told me she found one of my soldiers and it now stays on her desk) and find out what their beliefs are. In my reality, every day is a protest and every day is a chance to learn more about the world around me and to inspire others to do so as well.

In the reality of my classmates, they see homeless people as Others to be feared and, most definitely, not someone to sit down next to at the bus stop. They see poor people and minority poor, in general, as Others, and don’t consider that the police may treat minorities very badly for no reason, because they can. Though some of my peers are not from New England, either, and have been in New England longer than me, they do not see what I see. When I helpfully told a classmate last semester which buses to take to get to the airport, she gave me a look like there was no way she was ever getting on a city bus, thank you very much, even though the bus would take her straight to the terminal door and it would only cost her $1.25, as opposed to about $50 in a taxi she had been telling me she willingly paid. When I listen to my peers talk, they describe other people with my level of enthusiasm as “crazy.” They ignore me when I offer to take care of a problem with a creepy stalker at our apartment complex. I, too, have become an Other to many of my more mainstream peers. “Crazy” people question the status quo. “Crazy” people don’t care about fashion. “Crazy” people don’t care what other people think of them.

I love it when class discussions turn to something I feel is actually important. I love discussing inequality in history and reflecting it back to our present-day world. I feel energized when I try to make a difference in the world around me and try to educate others about the injustices I see. I feel like a lot of people don’t even notice. I feel like a lot of people stay in their comfy, insulated worlds–or, they’ll see an injustice or something will bother them, but they won’t do anything about it. At some point, I crossed the line between silence and speaking up and found it to be an amazingly transformative experience for me, but the rest of the world didn’t come with me. At some point, I stopped being afraid of going back home for Christmas and, instead, became energized for the epic battle of the millennia between my hate-mongering brother and myself. Looking back over my life, I feel like becoming an activist was a natural progression for me.

Governor Mike Huckabee, Shame on You

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee wasted no time in using Ted Kennedy’s death for his own political gain. Thursday, he stated that Kennedy would have been sent “home to take pain pills and die” under Obama’s health care plan. Instead of grieving the death of a champion of civil rights, Huckabee took what mattered most to Kennedy–socialized health care–and turned it around to create Kennedy’s last months alive a pillar to expensive, privatized health care that, had he not been a Kennedy or a senator, he might not have even been able to afford.

[Kennedy] would be a very fortunate man if his heroic last few months were what future generations remember him most for.

Yeah, let’s remember that no matter how sick he was, he still wanted to help others less fortunate than himself. Shame on you, Huckabee. I distinctly remember reading somewhere about taking care of widows and orphans, and about some man who went around healing the sick. I wonder where that was? It’ll come to me.

Asthma, I Hate You

Fate: Write an entry about how much you love your AeroChamber spacer, and you will need an emergency nebulizer treatment only an hour later. Then you’ll be placed on maximum doses of Advair, another nasal spray, and told to buy eye drops.

From now on, I’m not saying I like anything. (That should last about five minutes.) It only serves to jinx yourself. Anybody else feel like crashing some townhall discussions about health care and screaming until there’s socialized medicine in the US?

The Costs of Mental Illnesses

A ten-year survey found that mental illnesses are some of the most costly to treat. On top of this, the number of people diagnosed also increased dramatically. (The source I read said almost 100%, but this makes no sense mathematically because 100% would mean everyone on earth is seeking treatment for a mental health issue.) Among the most diagnosed mental illnesses in this survey were depression and bipolar disorder.

Mental illnesses were estimated to have cost Americans $96 billion in 1996, according to the Surgeon General. Other costly conditions are heart disease, cancer, trauma-related disorders, and asthma. (Thus, if you have, say, three of these, sucks to be you?)

You’re going to help out the mentally ill in that magical health care plan, right, Obama?

About Those Health Reform Protests . . .

Best poster ever.