It's suppose to be about caring. The recommended list reflects a lot and it's telling.
People are dying because they cannot afford to stay alive. That's the long and short of it.
I don't care who blogs for money. Few out there reading this would turn down hard money to blog for a living, myself included.
I don't find these threads fun or funny. I'm in the minority and I'm fine with it.
Some of us need viable and affordable healthcare. Period. We can point fingers and bitch about hurt feelings and nefarious ulterior motives all we want, but the long and short of it is that some of us needed single payer and since that's about a likely to happen as it is that I'll wake up tomorrow a leggy redhead, a realistic and affordable public option would be acceptable. People are dying while we're pushing and shoving each other about "being patient" and "who's not being on the up and up".
Well, here's what's on the up and up with me:
Some of you know this and some don't. I've got lymphoma. Slow growing, even indolent at times, but the facts of the matter are that it's killing me. Very slowly, but it's killing me, nonetheless.
When the time comes for me to be treated - and make no mistake, that time will come, I cannot afford the meds that aren't biologics let alone the ones that are, for my type of lymphoma.
I wrote parts of this as a comment nyceve's thread last week and then some again in Mahakali Overdrive's thread the next day.
Nothing's changed between then and now.
(And to everyone else who doesn't really think about it one way or another, you should. Imagine waking up tomorrow and being told by your employer that they dropped your kids or your spouse or whoever you care about from your healthcare plan because it's too much of a drain on their short term profits. What would you do?)©
Speaking as someone living with cancer who cannot afford the non-biologics that're being offered for my form of cancer on the minimal healthcare insurance plan I've got - my end being just over $6,800.00 for 2 x 25-day courses of arsenic trioxide (one example of the chemo prescribed for my type of lymphoma - careful, the link's a pdf) at 10 mg per day for an average adult (me).
Everything looks really pretty on paper. I'll wait until I see just how this is going to work in real life on real people before I voice my opinion. If I live through 2012, that is.
I'm not afraid of death. And I'm not afraid of the cancer.
Speaking solely for myself, I have more respect for this cancer than I do for politics and most politicians. It's just doing what cancer does. It's not behaving any differently with me than it would with anyone else; it doesn't like me or hate me. It's got no prejudices and treats us all the same. And it doesn't change its behavior for a percentage, profit, or vote.
I'll trust my fate to the hands of the universe and I'm fine with it.
This isn't about politics, semantics, proper wording, or hurt feelings. This is suppose to be about saving lives.
What the hell good is there in developing all these wonderful (supposed) life-saving pharmaceuticals, if only the select can afford them???