He was 39 years old. For most of his adult life he made six figures, paid his taxes, Medicare, Medicaid and was a regular volunteer at the local shelter in his community, he was a good man. When he was 38 he decided that the Chicago life was just too much and headed down to Arkansas for a better quality of life with his family. Making that decision required him to leave his job and with that his health insurance.
At 38, being uninsured for a few months or a year seemed to have little risk; after all, he was a healthy guy. One day, a short nine months later, David started to feel bad; he could not quite put his finger on what was wrong, but something. I begged him to go to the doctor and find out. He would not, "I don't have insurance sis, its just a bug, I'll be fine", impossible to argue with David when his mind was made up. Two days later when the phone rang at 2:00 am, I knew something was terribly wrong. David had been rushed to the hospital and was in a coma. Less than 24 hours later, he was gone. David had diabetes (the silent killer), unbeknownst to him, and had fallen into a diabetic coma. The cause of death should have been "no health insurance". You see statistically, the uninsured wait until there is a catastrophic health emergency before they seek help, rather than face the possibility of financial ruin.
It has been nine years and still the loss of my brother is a very deeply personal pain. It is not so much losing him; if we had lost him to an accident, it would have been a much shorter healing process. However, knowing that a young, wonderful, productive American citizen lost his life because the greatest county in this world did not have universal healthcare or an affordable "stop gap" health care system that the David's of this country could have jumped into makes for a very slow acceptance. And frankly, anger, David is of the many of the 10 of thousands who have lost their lives to "no health insurance", many more will follow. I have never see a statistic that gives the mortality rate of insured versus the uninsured. My guess, horrifying.
With thousands of Americans falling off the insured rolls everyday, with health insurance costs skyrocketing and the absolute reality that if you are uninsured and have to go to the hospital you WILL face catastrophic financial ramifications, how many more must die before we as Americans face this KILLER - "no health insurance".
For my bother David