Tragic tale of legendary comics writer and public defender abandoned by health care industry

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

If you read Marvel Comics as a kid in the '80s, chances are you know Mantlo's name.
A long read, but a well-written, heartbreaking and sad article about the massive defects of the U.S. health care system.

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Bill Mantlo was a legendary writer for Marvel Comics in the 1970s and 1980s. But today, he inhabits a broken body abandoned by both the health insurance industry and the federal healthcare reform meant to help people like him. This is his story.

The neighborhood of Far Rockaway, Queens, N.Y. is the picture of urban blight, a crammed mixture of public housing blocks, shuttered storefronts, brownfields and small churches in what used to be homes. Most of the fences are topped with razor wire. Large piles of garbage lay scattered on broken sidewalks. The most recent sign of commercial development is a billboard advertising $300 divorces. No spouse signature required.

Tucked away on Beach 19th Street is the Queens-Nassau Rehabilitation Center and Nursing Home, a bare-bones geriatric and head-trauma facility. Small and tightly quartered, its halls are partially blocked by old, frail-looking patients wearing ragged clothing.

Bill Mantlo is one of them. At first glance, there is nothing to suggest that he is different from his fellow patients, nothing to suggest the unusually high-profile career he once had, the near-fatal car accident that ended it, or his tortuous transit through the healthcare system from the outside world to Queens-Nassau. And certainly nothing that would point out how his life’s remarkable reversal of fortune illustrates not only some of the worst deficiencies of modern healthcare, but of the effort to reform it, as well.

more:
http://www.lifehealthpro.com/2011/11/07/tragic-tale

[barbtries]

1. excellent piece

worth the read. we need single payer health care and wall street can go fuck itself.

[Downwinder]

2. How close to the edge we all ride!!! n/t

[Downwinder]

3. Kick for visibility. n/t

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

4. kicking for the daytime crowd

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