Willem Frankfort
Our personal politics are always shaped and motivated by our personal experiences. With the healthcare of millions of our citizens at risk in the upcoming election, one particular story comes to mind. Not only is it relevant to this extremely important issue, but it mirrors my own current trouble to a frightening degree. Seven years ago, a friend of mine died. He wasn’t a close friend, and I had not spoken to him for years prior to his death. The circumstances of his death are a prime example of what is wrong with this country, and what must be done to fix it.
Joseph G Furr and I attended the same church as children, the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex in Orange, New Jersey. We were in the same Sunday school class, and often ate together during coffee hour. His parents were a little strange. They were prominent Communists, but the UU faith is such that political differences were tolerated with a level of civility which, frankly would be refreshing to see in our government. Although I have socialist tendencies, I often thought they were very overzealous in their beliefs.
Joe and I shared a love of hip hop music, and we would talk about Redman and Method Man after the sermons. I drifted away from the church community as I got older, although my mother still went for some time. I had very little contact with the Furrs over the years. In 2009, I got word that Joseph had died. Despite my personal aversion to church related activities, I attended his funeral. When I heard the circumstances of his death, it was enough to make me sick.
Well before Obamacare, if you could not afford to pay out of pocket to see a doctor, you often did not see a doctor when one was required. Joe had been walking around with diabetes for most of his adult life, completely untreated and undiagnosed. He was in fantastic physical condition, training to be a skilled diesel mechanic. Far better condition than I. When he finally saw a doctor, he was placed on a regimen of pills and insulin.
His health plan did not cover prescription drugs, and because it had gone so long without treatment, he needed a lot of drugs. So, simply out of inability to pay, he was forced to ration his pills, skipping days in order to make them last longer. One day, while skipping his pills, he fell into an irreversible diabetic coma and died. His mother told the entire story during his eulogy. At the time it seemed to be in poor taste, using her son’s funeral to make a political stump speech.
When I was confronted with the same situation, I realized I was too hasty to judge her. I have been feeling non-specific symptoms for years. Fatigue. Pain in my legs and back. Last September my symptoms became much more acute. There was a sharp pain in my kidneys, and my urine became excessively dark and bubbly. I felt crippling pain all the time, to the point where even just breathing felt like absolute agony. I lost all the coordination in my legs, and became weak and unstable. I began to notice cracks in my teeth and horrific infections in my mouth. The worst part was not understanding what was wrong with me.
I worried about choices I had made. I was very worried about AIDS, cancer, kidney infections, and a host of other ailments. My Medicaid had lapsed, and I was waiting for the slow grind of the bureaucracy to send me a new card. I had to apply for the charity care process. All in all, it took me five months from the onset of my symptoms to see a doctor without seeing a bill. During these five months, I experienced agonizing pain, several near death experiences, and true fear like I have never felt before.
When I finally got into the clinic, I was immediately diagnosed with extreme hypertension, and later with diabetes. Partial relief from my symptoms came immediately after taking the pills they prescribed for me. If we had a single payer system, not only would I have gotten treatment much faster, but might never have developed these diseases in the first place! After years without thinking of my dead friend, his story became quite analogous to my own.
If this happened to my friend and directly caused his death, and it happened to me, how many more people across this country have also experienced this? How many more damaged kidneys? How many more deaths? The conservative base in America always frames the issue of universal healthcare in terms of whether we can afford it. My question is how can we afford not having it? This is not a financial issue, but a moral issue. The inconvenient truth that conservatives don’t want to discuss is that their policies are a death sentence on thousands and thousands of hard working Americans.
Opposing universal healthcare is almost the same thing as holding a gun to my head and threatening to shoot. This time last month, I thought I was going to die. I was curled up in a bed, struggling to breathe. This is why it is so important that we get out and vote. We need to ask ourselves if some antiquated economic theories are important enough to justify denying healthcare options to people who need them. No other candidate in this election supports single payer healthcare except Bernie Sanders. It is time that we as a people speak up and give the government our collective moral imperative. We demand the services available everywhere else in the world. We must not allow even one more Joseph G Furr to die a horrible death to provide tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of the country!
The Popular Voice 