On February 6, 2017, my friend Katie Rohrer was rushed to the hospital in a state of total shock suffering from acute fulminant liver failure, a rare condition that came on suddenly, even though she had no history of liver disease. Upon arrival, she went into a coma and developed severe complications, including encephalopathy, slow brain-wave activity and was on life support. The doctors told her partner, Mike, to prepare for the worst and Mike stayed by her side in the hospital for days on end, shocked and terrified.
Fortunately, Katie survived, but she had to learn how to walk again and could barely function for a very long time. Mike has had to care for her full-time and is her primary caregiver, which means that he hasn’t been able to work, either. To make matters worse, her subsidized insurance ended after she was diagnosed (probably because of the Trump Administration’s rollback of many of key provisions of the Affordable Care Act) and no new plans would cover the liver specialists she needed or her physician (PCP).
Now, Katie can go to doctor’s appointments, but has to beg her friends and family almost every day to donate to her GoFundMe page so that she can afford to pay for those visits: her health and life are held hostage by the poverty created by the very illness that she is trying to cure and her survival is put at risk by the prohibitively high costs of the very healthcare system and specialists that can save her life! She is trapped in a vicious circle, and is so desperate and overwhelmed that she keeps posting and begging her friends to keep sharing her campaign with others (if you’d like to donate to Katie’s GoFundMe campaign so that she can make ends meet, you may donate here: www.gofundme.com/...).
To make matters worse, some “friends” have started to complain and my last attempt to fundraise for her in the official Facebook group for alumni from our alma mater nearly resulted in the post being taken down because alumni got tired of seeing my posts, even though our entire alumni group could’ve ended the entire fundraiser if every member had simply given a one-time donation of $10 (and our alma mater considers itself to be one of the most liberal institutions in Massachusetts!)
I understand why people feel overwhelmed, tired, powerless, numb and angry these days, with so much craziness coming from Trump and Republicans on a daily basis. I also understand how annoying it is to be asked to donate again and again and how futile donating may seem, since there are still so many others out there suffering with similar issues EVERY DAY in America, so I’m not mad at my friends who’ve complained or who have decided not to donate (frankly, I’ve gotten tired of Katie asking me for money, too), but what makes me angriest is knowing that if our healthcare system is so bad that my friend Katie can be dropped by her insurer in MASSACHUSETTS, in 2018, it must be absolute hell for millions of other Americans and the only system that can end this kind of suffering is Medicare For All, which is why we need it.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this! If you’d like to fight back against the injustice of our current healthcare system, you may donate to my friend Katie’s campaign here: www.gofundme.com/… I don’t know the exact number of average daily users here, but I bet if even a small number of users gave $5, she’d exceed her goal. I’ve donated to other Kossacks in need before (including one yesterday) and I’ve been floored by how quickly and generously this community has donated to support one another. Frankly, you put my alma mater to shame!