If Some Deserve It, All Deserve It

Imagine if you will: A significant segment of the 85% of Americans who have good health care coverage go on strike for a day. Apart from emergencies and essential treatments, no one goes to the doctor, and no one gets a prescription filled. Instead, the healthcare-privileged and the healthcare-insecure alike flood the streets to assert the same principle: If some deserve it, all deserve it.
 

Making universal healthcare a reality for all is not pie-in-the-sky, it’s completely feasible. France spends far less per capita and has the best healthcare in the world — even for non-citizens. (Break your leg in France and find out for yourself.) Anyone who says the United States can’t afford it is woefully misinformed or just plain lying.

The historical parallel of such a strike would be when the citizens of Denmark and Bulgaria wore yellow stars en masse to show solidarity with their fellow Jewish citizens. This non-violent mass action saved thousands of lives, if only because far more people were willing to hide or smuggle Jews when they’d seen their neighbors willing to risk arrest posing as Jews themselves.

One of the reasons we have been unable to achieve to create a national health insurance system — alone among all developed countries — has been the success of vested interests in keeping us almost superstitiously afraid that if we gain more benefits for those lower on the economic ladder, they will somehow come out of those we receive ourselves. This psychology of scarcity has worked like a charm in keeping us balkanized and divided. In fact, this propaganda is so entrenched that to listen to a Republican Congressman on cable news, you wouldn’t have the slightest idea that the top 1% has been the beneficiary of 95% of the income gains in the past decade. A large chunk of that wealth resides in the sixth of the economy related to healthcare. A nationwide strike would deliver a much needed reminder to the members of Congress owned by insurance and pharmaceutical oligarchs that there are different ways to exercise popular will than the ballot box; we can vote with our pocketbooks.

I admit that I’m not optimistic the same GOP base that terrifies Congress could be convinced to join in any national action. Sadly, I think the rise of Trump has gone hand in hand with the death of empathy among those who have voted for him. Many appear to be so invested in notions of validating their own deservedness that they are even willing to risk losing their own healthcare if it means that those they perceive as undeserving don’t get theirs. That said, this is a highly unpredictable issue. Many a working-class Trump voter recently covered under Obamacare is panicking at the prospect of losing his or her Medicaid. This could be one issue that begins to pierce the Trump-worshipping psychosis that still blankets half the country in a dense, incomprehensible fog.

The Republican rank-and-file would probably not participate mostly because they have become obsessed with sticking it to the coastal liberal elites they are convinced look down on them. Let me address them directly on this issue. Speaking for myself, you are correct. You have foisted this nightmare buffoon of a President on us, and I do look down on you for it. That doesn’t mean I don’t think you should get the same Cadillac care I have been lucky enough to get. I personally believe in this principle so much that I actually flushed my life-saving AIDS meds down the toilet and filmed it. This may seem like an odd and counter-intuitive act to you — just think of it as a show of good faith. I may never forgive you for bringing us Trump, but I really mean it when I say I will fight like hell to make sure you never have to worry that you have to choose between your financial survival and the physical well-being of you and your loved ones. That’s your right as an American. That’s your right as a human being.

MCO 2017

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/if-some-deserve-it-all-deserve-it_us_594eaf46e4b0326c0a8d08e6

Raising the Stakes for Real

Back in 1979, my older brother Luke advocated a novel solution to the Iranian hostage crisis. “We should all fly to Tehran. Planeloads and planeloads of us. Give them tens of thousands of hostages until they beg to let all of us go.” It was, to put it mildly, counter-intuitive. And kind of brilliant, when you think of it. He was an original thinker, my brother.

He died of AIDS in 1991. My own HIV progressed to full-blown AIDS in 1993, and I went on disability. I was evidently what they call “a slow progressor,” and by 1996 I was still alive and had accessed Social Security benefits, and most importantly of all, Medicare. After dealing with countless hassles with my private insurance, it was a godsend. It is a very efficient, well-run bureaucracy. When the “cocktails” came out, the Ryan White Healthcare act paid for my life-saving meds until Medicare Part D came along. These programs literally saved my life.

Returning to the job market in my ‘50s, during the Great Recession and with a large work gap in my resume, was not a formula for getting the kind of job that brings health benefits with it. I eventually returned to work, but as a freelancer, symptomatic of the “new normal” economy. I cobbled together an income doing work I love, but there are dry stretches between editing gigs, and being able to stay on Medicare continues to save my life.

Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare is very savvy. In order not to galvanize seniors against it, changes exclude the over-55 demographic, who vote in large numbers. At 58, I am probably “safe.” I could creep into my retirement with other baby-boomers, slamming the door behind me. Sorry, Mr. Trump, but that is not okay with me. Some of us were raised with a conscience, by parents who fought against fascism in World War II. The “greatest generation” taught us a thing or two.

Tom Price, Obamacare’s biggest opponent in the House, is now Secretary of Health and Human Services. This is one of the greatest obscenities of an administration that promises to be full of them. Millions of Trump voters, ironically, are most likely to lose the insurance the Affordable Care Act brought them. I guess they will discover the hard way that karma’s a bitch.

I have been casting about for meaningful ways to effectively resist the disaster of the ACHA that threatens to befall the country, and I have decided on this one. In protest against the Republican move to gut healthcare, I have flushed a month of my AIDS medications down the toilet.  I have filmed myself doing so, and posted it on Facebook Live. I am hoping if enough people repost it, (or do the same with their own meds and film it) this protest could play a similar role to a hunger strike in galvanizing opposition to the bill. All we need is three Senators.
Meaningful resistance means the stakes have to be high and the risks very real. In the age of social media, enough people sharing that they are willing to go on a medication strike if necessary could have an enormous effect. And it can’t just come from those people who risk losing their insurance, it has to come from people who don’t.

Since Trump’s election, I have had time to get clear on the person I want to be, and I believe many of you have as well. I want to be like the RAF pilots who saved England during the Battle of Britain, like the neighbors of my mother who hid Jews in France during the war, like the Civil Rights protesters who crossed that bridge in Selma in 1963 even as the batons came crashing down on them. Most importantly, I don’t want to be the German who plugged his ears on Kristallnacht.

Frankly, I would rather die of AIDS at 60 than of anything else at 85, if living those extra years meant I had to look back on a life where, when it counted, I was not willing to risk my life to fight for what I believe in.  Universal and affordable healthcare for all, PERIOD.

Please repost, retweet, respond.

RESIST.