The usual Jeremiads won't suffice - if you knew him, you knew his personality filled up a lot more space than his unreasonably gigantic frame. But if you didn't, you just don't know what an injustice it is that he died.
And to think, it was a treatable condition, that he couldn't afford to take care of because he had no health insurance. If you're against public health insurance, let me take this occasion to say FUCK YOU royally. My friend would be alive, if he had an option. We're all diminished by his loss - far more than we were enriched by his presence, because his absence can only ever be felt all the more keenly for how much more fun things would be with him around.
This nation needs universal health care, and Taylor Christian. It is too late for for latter, but somewhere there's another Taylor that can be helped. Write to your Congressperson and insist that universal health care should be high on our list of priorities. England managed it even while reconstructing after the blitz - surely we can too.
I won't say any more, it's all been said. But I will do more, and it will be because of Taylor.
And to think, it was a treatable condition, that he couldn't afford to take care of because he had no health insurance. If you're against public health insurance, let me take this occasion to say FUCK YOU royally. My friend would be alive, if he had an option. We're all diminished by his loss - far more than we were enriched by his presence, because his absence can only ever be felt all the more keenly for how much more fun things would be with him around.
This nation needs universal health care, and Taylor Christian. It is too late for for latter, but somewhere there's another Taylor that can be helped. Write to your Congressperson and insist that universal health care should be high on our list of priorities. England managed it even while reconstructing after the blitz - surely we can too.
I won't say any more, it's all been said. But I will do more, and it will be because of Taylor.
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As far as universal health care goes, I was totally against it for the longest time, just on basic free-will capitalist principles. Then I had to get an adrenaline injection for a bad allergic reaction to an antibiotic, and I dunno, OD'd or something-- because I had a heart attack. A five hour long heart attack. I sat in the emergency room for four an a half hours with agonizing chest pains that I didn't know were possible. They finally got me into a room, but no doctor ever showed up, and eventually the reaction subsided and I just left without ever having seen anyone (other than the triage nurse who'd hooked me up to the EKG and was very sympathetic, and overly apologetic that she couldn't do anything for me). I saw a guy with either a gunshot wound or a knife wound, lying on a stretcher in the hall; so when I complained the next day about how awful the hospital was, it was not just on my own behalf, but that of the guy who was BLEEDING TO DEATH without anyone with the time to tend his wound(s).
So then, my friend Alistair (who is an atypical Berkeley hippie in that he is socialist for entirely pragmatic reasons) pointed out that the reason emergency rooms are so terrible is that people without health insurance don't go to the doctor for regular check-ups or to complain about early symptoms; they go to the emergency room when they're dying. Which causes a big backlog at your friendly local ER. So people who pay for their own health insurance and say "it is unconstitutional to force me to pay for someone else's health insurance" have to sit for five hours in a waiting room while their hearts are doing cartwheels in their chest, too depressed to complain on one's own behalf because of the guy who's bleeding to death ten feet away.
Though fixing the healthcare system in this country is going to take a lot more than just providing coverage for everyone. Something needs to be done about the malpractice insurance scam that's fucking over the medical industry. The cost of malpractice insurance is responsible for the vast majority of the increase in healthcare costs of the last 20 years.
Edited at 2009-01-07 03:51 am (UTC)
We CAN do it, and we SHOULD do it. We don't have to give up on capitalism, either - competition can come in the form of suppliers to the UHC system. We CAN do it. We ought to.
Because you know, Jesus would have HATED all of his children having equal access to healthcare.
What is the point of having a country if the members of the country are allowed to die of simple illnesses? It's like anti-democracy.
it's given me hope to think that the project i've been working on might actually change situations like that. the stories i've read from people they've interviewed are absolutely heartbreaking, and have been similar to your friend's situation. this country's approach to health care is an absolute travesty.
the project i've been managing is primarily concerned with entering names and addresses of nearly a million people who are pleding to vote for universal health care. our client now has something like a thousand mailbags on the way that they will fill with all the pledge cards people sent, and then dump them on the capitol steps. if i can find out when that's supposed to happen, i'll let you know. they're a large lobbying organization and are seriously pushing for change in this direction. there is some hope there.
i agree with
That big, loud and full bartone of his that filled any space. It was deep and dark and sweetly rich. It arrived before he entered a space and lingered after he left.
And silenced.
Goddammit.