General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Poor People Just Die"---from 7/12/09 (thanks to
BluesRunTheGame for locating it)
Originally appeared 7-12-09
I was five when "Pap" died. Pap was my grandmother's next door neighbor and, like most who lived in our neighborhood, he was a working man, a laborer. One of my grandfathers died the year after I was born and the other I saw maybe twice a year. Pap filled in for them on an almost daily basis. He let me "help" in his garden and let me pet his beagles whenever I wanted.
I came home from school one afternoon that fall of my first grade year and my grandmother told me to sit down at the kitchen table. Both my parents worked and we stayed with "Nanny" after school. She said she had some real sad news and that I needed to be a "big boy". "Pap died today. His heart was sick and it quit working. The ambulance came, but it was too late", she explained, speaking softly and earnestly.
I cried. Eventually, I asked what is always asked: "Why? Why did he have to die? Why couldn't the doctors make him well? Why couldn't they save him?"
Nanny explained that doctors and hospitals and medicine cost a lot of money and Pap didn't have a lot of money. Rich people bought medicine and had surgery and went to hospitals. "Poor people just die", she said, as gently as possible and held me while I sobbed into her apron.
In the fifties, I overheard several hushed conversations between my parents and other adults that featured the word "cancer". I didn't understand what it was, but I knew it was bad, very bad. Only later did I understand that even "routine" cancers were usually a death sentence for those without insurance or wealth or both. Family members maintained gruesome vigils while the tumors spread throughout their loved ones body and sometimes the stench of necrotic tissue required those attending to the dying to smear Vicks under their nose to keep from retching.
Are we to return to those days? Are we to once again allow money to be the real medicine in our nation? Will we be too busy to march on Washington? Too busy to hound our senators and congressmen to vote for AT LEAST a public option for health care insurance?
I can accept wealth allowing some to drive a Mercedes or a Porsche while others drive Chevys or ride the bus.
I cannot accept wealth allowing some to live while others "just die".
Obviously, some of this is outdated, but the tragedies it discusses are still with us today.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)Atticus
(15,124 posts)Grokenstein
(5,722 posts)"Let people practice what they want!"
It's easy for sociopath trash like the Pauls to dismissively tell the poor to fend for themselves, but that's just evil. That's ringing the dinner bell for the snake oil (or these days "essential oils" salesmen.
irisblue
(32,969 posts)**Fuck Ron Paul**
democratisphere
(17,235 posts)Most people are actually broke.
The COST OF AMERICAN HEALTHCARE is TRULY, ACTUALLY CRIMINAL. (This crime must be stopped and reveresed)
If people without insurance become gravely ill, death is likely, if not inevitable.
MAGA.
MAKE AMERICA GRACIOUS AGAIN.
Great post Atticus!
CTyankee
(63,909 posts)Salviati
(6,008 posts)and between the ears, other than that, he's still moving around.
democratisphere
(17,235 posts)Grokenstein
(5,722 posts)But hey, his spawn is making up for his absence in front of cameras.
paleotn
(17,912 posts)Seems to me he and his son are loathsome creatures, neither alive or dead, that suck the life out of the living. Human parasites....and I struggle applying the word human to them.
democrank
(11,094 posts)I can not, for the life of me, understand why so many Americans support the health care system we have. Many folks are one unexpected catastrophic medical issue away from losing their homes. Some have lost jobs and cant afford insurance. Some dont regularly take life-saving medications because they cost too much.
The system needs an overhaul. Not a little tweaking, but an overhaul.
democratisphere
(17,235 posts)CTyankee
(63,909 posts)It is cult thinking.
Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)People that talk this way have no idea what they're talking about. They have allowed others to formulate their opinions instead of thinking, or educating themselves about what socialism truly looks like. It is pathetic that they are so willfully ignorant.
paleotn
(17,912 posts)and ironically it drives people to hurt themselves just so some mythical "undeserving" person doesn't take advantage of the system. They'd rather we all lived in the squalor of Sinclair's Jungle just so someone, somewhere doesn't get something they don't think they deserve. It's a terrible, soul crushing way to live, but I think it's America's true epidemic, driving most of our national ills. I could care less if someone gets something we may not think they deserve as long as everyone's basic needs are provided for. It's a hell of a lot better than the vast majority of us living in some laissez faire hell. I guess that's the root of what makes us different from Rethuglicans and wing nuts.
mountain grammy
(26,619 posts)CloudWatcher
(1,846 posts)In just the last week, giant progress in the treatment of cystic fibrosis. Totally amazing results for 90% of the people that suffer from this terrible disease.
Oh, except the cost. Estimated to be $311,000. Per patient. Per year.
Long-awaited cystic fibrosis drug could turn deadly disease into a manageable condition
The system is broken. We should never have for-profit and health-care in the same sentence.
mountain grammy
(26,619 posts)Well worth resurrecting because its true.. the Koch brother who just died had prostrate cancer. When he was diagnosed he was given a short time to live but lived another 20 or so.. His money kept him alive. Ill bet he never touched a childs heart..