I am sorry to see the news today. I, too, know what it's like to lose a family member to cancer.
This last March I lost my mother, 55, to colon cancer. It was discovered in 2007 about two weeks after I'd received my Master's degree in August. She had to be taken to the ER due to rectal bleeding: the ensuing surgery resulted in the removal of half of her intestine and a downward spiral from there that took her life a short 8 months later.
Rather than pollute the condolences diaries to make a point about this primary, I will use my own diary: all of my mother's travails could have been prevented.
You see, my mother was impoverished for her entire life. She made the unfortunate choice to drop out of high school, as did my father. They divorced when I was 11. My brother and I were given in to her custody. She worked two jobs almost her whole life and did not take welfare or public assistance of any kind.
She never had health insurance of any kind for herself ("share of cost" for Medicaid in California would have taken half her monthly income). You can see where this is going: she never had any sort of regular care under a physician. She went to the local county clinic when she had a medical problem that just couldn't be ignored--at a dear financial cost just for the visit and much more if medicine or other more advanced procedures than a visit with a physician were required.
Her colon cancer could have been detected if she'd had regular screenings and been under the regular care of a physician. She could have told a doctor about the symptoms she'd been having for some time: difficulty moving her bowels, the feeling of a hard "lump" that she could move around, etc.
But none of this happened. It didn't happen because she literally couldn't afford it. A visit to that county clinic meant she had to skip on a utility bill (and use the heater or a/c less the next month to make up for it) or eat less. I tried to offer assistance, but she was too worried about me and my schooling, or my financial situation or my brother's, to take it. She refused every time and offer. I couldn't have contributed much, but it could've been something.
Shortly after my graduation I had a job that paid well enough to service my student loan and credit debt as well as my living expenses, marginal benefits (which I had to pay premiums for), and perhaps a few dollars to eat out once a month. But it was too late to help with the bills for regular physician visits, and I didn't earn enough to pay for the chemotherapy she desperately needed. She received discounted treatments from the county clinic, which "thankfully" were deferred due to her financial situation, but the nature of such clinics means that the bare minimum of care is given--she really may as well have spared herself the pain of chemotherapy, in some sense. Not that it would have mattered due to the late discovery of the illness--and that's the point.
This last July I got a much better paying job, with far better benefits. Together with my fiancee's job, our household income puts us in the top 20% of income earners, and a few years' cost-of-living raises from the top 5%. We each have fully-paid benefits through our respective employers--neither one of us pays a single penny in premiums for our rather generous plans. We're going to be fine (maybe less fine, if McCain's benefit-tax causes our employers to re-think whether they want to provide it to us cost free, but with our incomes we can afford private insurance quite easily).
People who have the same background and life as my mother don't have that option. They should. Health care is a basic right. My mother spent her life doing two menial-labor jobs. That was the consequence of her poor choice as a youth. But that work spared my brother and I from the same, both by example and by her exhortation for us to utilize our public education and loan programs as best as we were able. It allowed her employer's business to be a little better than it may have been--earning them more money, and thus helping my mother's co-workers have a secure job and occasional raises. And so on. She wasn't an anonymous, expendable cog in the machine. But our society treated her like one. McCain would continue on that road, and in fact make it worse.
We--people like my fiancee and me, people who aren't as well off, but still well-enough-off, people who are very well off--all of us owe it to ourselves and our fellow citizens to have better care for one another.
And that's the choice in a nutshell for this election. A vote for one candidate is a vote for a society that supports the same shameful, undignified treatment of people that ultimately make our country work that we have now; a vote for the other is a vote for something better--maybe just a little better, but still better, and on the right path.