here's the first one! (and yes, that IS one of the frames from my last post - i sized this piece to fit in them!)
i'm obviously being slightly facetious with this piece, since people die in every country. but at the same time, i'm really not, because people DON'T die here from things that could have been prevented if they'd been able to afford to seek medical attention.
i was lucky that i was away in the land of super slow dial up and no cable during the worst of the health care debate media coverage, because the little that i have seen literally blows me away and frustrates me to no end. i can't fathom AT ALL the people who are opposed to ensuring that everyone has the equal right to medical care. how can any moral person be opposed to basic health care?
i often say how much i love Portland. i do, i adore it. it has an amazing queer community, awesome politics, an incredible crafty culture, and some of my favourite people in the world live in Portland. i'd move there in seconds, but they don't have healthcare.
i'm not saying that all socialized medical systems are perfect, because they so obviously are not (though they aren't nearly as bad as the right wingers in the US are trying to say either! god, the lies being spread astound me!). but at least we have it, at least we have something to START WITH, to work with. how can you have healthcare reform, when you don't even have basic health care?
eight years ago last april, a friend of mine died. we were around the same age, 20ish, and went to the same church, unitarian universalist. i didn't know her very well because we'd just met at a conference the previous fall and then again at one in february, but i was really looking forward to getting to know her better. she was sweet and generous and made me feel incredibly welcome in situations where i was feeling a little too mainstream (only at UU events would i feel too mainstream!).
she lived with her grandmother, and they were very low income. she started to feel sick, but assumed it was just a bad cold. knowing that if she went to the ER, she'd end up with a huge bill that would take years to pay back, she decided not to bother, since it was just a cold. a few days later, she died of meningitis.
between the experience of my friend and my own experiences as a person with a chronic illness, i'm obviously coming at this from a very personal place. but i just don't GET IT. i cannot comprehend how a country can NOT have healthcare, how a country can have countless people who are going without basic care, countless people who are going bankrupt to try to get care for their loved one, countless people who are dying from things that CAN BE PREVENTED, how people accept that as reality.
so that's what this piece is in reaction to.
