Between having just spent a week with a Crohn’s flare up, following the unbelievable narcissism and egotism that is the Trump Administration’s attempt to cover up the Coronavirus, and with news that the conservative activists on the Supreme Court are poised to strike down the pillars of the Affordable Care Act, the heinous nature of our country’s healthcare has never been clearer to me.
What kind of nation willfully burdens its people to medical debt and denial of care because they are already sick? What kind of nation makes people pay thousands of dollars for the medicine that keeps them alive, or keeps them in remission? What kind of amoral, exploitative government allows its people to have to pay for the privilege to be tested for a global pandemic?
Having lived with Crohn’s Disease since I was ten years old I have spent my entire life distinctly and involuntarily aware of the fragility of our individual lives and health. If I had turned 18 before Obama’s presidency I could have been removed from my parents’ insurance and denied healthcare simply because I actually needed it.
Obamacare offered me a reprieve to be able to get on my own two feet and made it illegal to deny my care because I was unlucky enough to have a disease. If Republicans have their way they would let insurance kick me off because I need a colonoscopy every two years and the prescription I am going to be on for the rest of my life costs them $3,000 a year.
This is a country that says it is too impossible and irrational to fight for the right for all people to have health care. This is a country where some of the leading presidential candidates say we cannot afford to pay for healthcare. This is amoral.
Every year our congress provides millions more dollars to our military to support the murder of people all over the world in drone strikes and spies on every citizen of its country and allied governments. These things never need a debate over economic feasibility.
I support Medicare for All not just because I need it—I support Medicare for All for all of my brothers and sisters throughout this nation who are economically crippled by medical bills, or who forego their medicine that could save their life because it is too expensive.
I support Bernie Sanders because he is the moral choice. Period.
