maybe if I write this I will feel better

[rm]

While my coming out process was both vague and not narratively interesting, I've noted before and will surely note again that V for Vendetta (the graphic novel, thanks) played a role in it. I wrote this for Yuletide a few years ago, and if you ask me to tell you why fanfiction matters, this piece is part of that story.

I cannot believe that I sat on the couch last night watching the men vying to be president seriously (such as it is) debate whether healthcare is a right or a privilege. Leaving aside matters of capitalism and socialism, our broke ass country and our ideological fears -- doesn't everyone have a right to live? to be helped if they can be helped? Isn't it simple? At least philosophically?

So today I am angry.

I am angry that someone I've known for fifteen years is facing a medical crisis that may very well affect the rest of his life: if not in terms of health, then surely in terms of finances. Because he's uninsured.

I am angry that his partner is facing racism and insensitivity from a medical staff that doesn't seem to understand that we fight for those we love, even when they're uninsured, even when we're scared.

I am angry that I have so many friends who are also ill and uninsured and facing what seems to be a constantly combative medical system.

I am angry that my mother, who is insured, had to pay for an MRI out of pocket because her insurance company told her she'd have to wait 6 months to have another one, eventhough the suspicion of cancer was there then.

I am angry that my own very real medical condition which has ruined my teeth, given me permanent nerve damage, increased my risk of cancer and has caused me immense amounts of pain went undiagnosed for 30 years because I was merely a woman who was oversensitive in the eyes of doctor after doctor and even in the eyes of my family.

I am angry at a medical establishment that wants me to be ashamed of how I look, because of the very same disease they weren't willing to discover I had.

I am angry at doctors who tell you to lose weight before they even look at your stats.

I am angry at the medical fetishization of pregnancy and aging, that taxes our system and harms the experience of natural processes when drastic interventions are not needed.

I am angry at a drug industry that concentrates on the most lucrative therapies instead of the most needed therapies and pushes pills with significant side-effects and low efficacy for non-life threatening conditions.

I am angry that my trans friends have to be declared mentally ill and then save and save and save to afford treatment insurance deems cosmetic.

I am angry that a woman I fence with couldn't even get the shattered teeth removed from her mouth when she was in a bicycling accident, because again, just cosmetic!

I am angry (and grateful and sad) that every broke, struggling, one bit of bad luck (or less, some of them are already there) away from a system that won't help them person I know is digging deep to help the person who won the bad luck sweepstakes this week. But I don't want these lessons in the beauty of our friends or the eternally exhausting nature of triage based on convenience and money.

I am so angry.

I am angry that sitting on the couch last night watching the debate with Patty, I felt like Ruth and Valerie.

And so I am angry at the people who tell me the results of this election won't really matter, won't really change my life, won't really put me at risk, won't really be the possible end of all things.

I am angry at people who tell me to calm down, as if I am merely a hysteric. As if my friends aren't at very real risk of dying from failed policy.

The election matters, and lives do, in fact, hang in the balance.

And if you think that doesn't include yours because you are insured, healthy, financially stable, straight and not in the military, well good for fucking you.

But it's now looking like equal marriage rights will be outlawed in California. You know what that affects other than human dignity? Health insurance.

Get it?

Comments

[marcmagus]

Interesting. I thought that was one of the most interesting questions posed in the debates, and the responses were actually somewhat telling.

I'll note that the question was right, privilege, or responsibility. If anybody had said privilege, they would have pretty much shown themselves a cold and unfeeling with no care for the suffering of others (nobody did).

The right vs. responsibility issue is an interesting discussion which drives directly to the heart of the health care debate, and the fact that we as a nation are so conflicted about it is pretty much exactly why our health-care "system" is such an abomination; in trying to satisfy both sides, we have something that just plain doesn't work.

The answer is non-obvious (in the general sense) because it is *not* a right in any of the usual phiilosophical senses of the term. It's certainly not a "natural right". It is, however, extremely desirable that all people have access to a reasonable standard of health care regardless of their means. There isn't much agreement as to what constitutes an acceptable and effective means to achieve such ends, and of course it ties into the ongoing debate as to the relative efficiencies of government bureaucracy and corporate bureaucracy.

"Right" says anybody in America should be able to demand health care (whatever standard is meant) and get it, presumably at cost to the taxpayers. "Responsibility" says, because it's apalling that there are people in our wealthy country who can't even get basic health care, it's the responsibility of those who have enough to make sure that those who don't can get this basic need met. It's non-specific whether this should be via taxes or voluntary contributions or what, though it's likely to more suggest the latter.

I think most of the real debate is between the people who believe that a large system based entirely on voluntary contributions is doomed to failure because not enough people will donate enough money/time/energy to see it succeed, and the people who believe a system based on a large government bureaucracy is doomed to failure due to the inherent inefficiencies of such.

You are absolutely justified in being frustrated and angry with the unsystematic mess we claim as a "health care system" right now. And the results of the election *definitely* matter in this respect, although I fear both plans are too simplified and short-sighted to bring us to the goal of providing a reasonable standard of health-care for everybody in America--but which one we pick will definitely change things.