Callie June was adopted by two loving parents, who immediately had to put her in Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to deal with her stage four cancer. Her parents, already working multiple jobs, did what most Americans are forced to do when confronted with high medical bills: They set up a GoFundMe page.
Most people have some sort of soul; they see the suffering of such a small life and are touched, even if they aren’t able to give.
Others use it as an opportunity to spread a hateful message.
The message, from a Facebook user going by “Bren Marie,” is beyond cruel.
“My prayers for Callie. I was going to donate $7600.00 to her fund, but I found out her parents are lesbian. I’ve chosen to donate to St. Jude due to that fact. Sorry. I’ll still pray for her though, but maybe it’s God’s way of getting your attention that she needs a mommy and a daddy, not two mommies.”
I genuinely mean this: Rot in hell, Bren Marie.
It always amazes me when awful human beings like her use their so-called religious beliefs to excuse their hate. The parents have committed no sin according to the Bible, and neither has Callie June.
Yet Bren Marie is the exact same sort of person whom I guarantee you’ll find at a MAGA rally, justifying the personification of sin and blasphemy while singing the praises of our charity-swindling cesspool of a president.
But there is a bigger issue here. This is what Americans have been reduced to: begging for money from people like this, to pay for medical care which almost every other civilized country on the planet considers a right.
When the hell did GoFundMe become a mandatory pillar of our healthcare insurance? One person who doesn’t think it should be this way is the CEO of GoFundMe, Rob Solomon, who told CBS News that one-third of the site’s fundraisers are for assistance with healthcare expenses.
“When we started in 2010, it wasn’t purposefully set up and built to be a substitute for medical insurance. We weren’t ever set up to be a health care company and we still are not. But over time, people have used GoFundMe for the most important issues they are faced with.”
Panhandling on cyberspace street corners to survive a medical emergency shouldn’t be a “solution,” but digital begging is now a well-established practice. In fact, hospitals now send out letters requiring you to beg for money before they treat you.
It’s only getting worse. Thanks to Donald Trump, one million more Americans have lost their healthcare since 2016. That number is growing rapidly, and even people who do have insurance still have to pay excruciatingly high deductibles.
So, until we get serious about a basic level of care for all of our citizens, begging will remain an established feature of our system. I had to do it six years ago (and I’m still paying off the bills). I helped a RedState blogger do it. Even conservatives who have declared themselves immune from needing healthcare have had to embrace it.
The Affordable Care Act was a step forward, but let’s face it: Our healthcare crisis is far too big to simply argue for “tweaks” to it. Until the Democrats control all branches of government, the ACA is too prone to manipulation and destruction. The GOP efforts to harm the ACA have had one silver lining, though: More Americans are behind single-payer than ever before. Try 70% of Americans.
Our leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, need to get on board with where the rest of America is. Their waffling is just stupid. You think single-payer is expensive? One-fifth of our economy is dedicated to healthcare spending. We spend more on healthcare than any other nation, and yet we also don’t provide even the most basic level of care for tens of millions of citizens. There isn’t a more inefficient and expensive healthcare system.
As far as strategy, Democrats could not get a better issue to fight on. For over a decade, the GOP has not been able to create a plan. All they can do is defend the current system, which no one, except the super rich, thinks is working.
At some point, with this new generation’s help, I believe we will have Medicare for All. None of the arguments and studies supporting it can match the image above, which is a metaphor of healthcare in this nation that can’t be ignored: A hateful stranger not only refusing to donate, but also leaning on their supposed faith as they insult the suffering parents of a young child in unimaginable pain.