‘Profit before people’ is fascism, and fascism killed my son

Me and Mike on his wedding day.

Eleven years ago today, I brought my son home to die.

I can’t describe to you how that feels. Unless you have lived it, you can’t even begin to know.

It was the end of hope, if you can imagine that.

Early that morning, my son and I sat in his living room. I had a cup of coffee, he had finished his. He looked so thin, so frail, but I still hoped we might have a few months, a road trip to the Northeast, just a little time.

“I’m ready for this to be over, Mom,” he said.

He had fought like hell for three years — the first year of that fight devoted to having someone who could help him take notice of his plight. In Savannah, at Memorial Health System, he had been ignored — at one time, spending 11 days in a hospital room not being seen by a single doctor because they had written him off as not profitable enough to deserve to live. They even neglected to treat a life-threatening infection that developed in his surgical wound.

We had gotten him a consultation with Dr. Herb Hurwitz at Duke University Medical Center, and Hurwitz had adopted him. Hurwitz and his team fought like hell for my son, but it was too late already by the time we got to them.

Two weeks ago, Mike had been told he needed to gain two pounds. I had gone to the Duke Chapel that afternoon to beg for those two pounds. I just wanted more time. I wasn’t ready to let go of hope. In hindsight, I wasn’t ever going to be ready to let go of him.

We got to the clinic and Mike slipped off his leather coat and stepped on the scale. He had lost a pound. This was it. It was over.

I’ll never forget the look on his face when he said, “I tried!” If only I could forget that moment. If only I could erase the image.

Dr. Hurwitz’s eyes filled with tears as he said, “You’re a good person, Mike. You don’t deserve what’s happening to you.”

I have since found that most Republicans are cautious with their sympathy. They want to know whether he was working when he got sick, as though unemployment deserves the death penalty.

When I call them out on it, they insist, “some people just want a handout.”

First of all, nobody “just wants a handout.” People want the dignity of access to lifesaving care.

Secondly, health care is not ever a handout. It is a basic human right, and we have a word for people who would deny others a basic human right that they, themselves, have. We call them fascists.

If you think my son deserved to die because insurance companies wouldn’t cover him and doctors at Memorial Health System in Savannah, Ga., wouldn’t care for him, you are a fascist in my book. “Profit before people” is about the shortest accurate definition of fascism there is.

I think that moment when we realized there was nothing more we could do was when I became convinced that my heart would stop when his did. I couldn’t picture life without him, so I would go with him.

As we were headed back to the parking garage, Mike turned around in his wheelchair and said, “What do you think I have, Mom? Two weeks?”

“God, I hope it’s more than that,” I said.

It wasn’t. In two weeks to the day, he would die. His heart would stop and mine would keep beating.

If you think I sound pissed as I watch the Democratic Party try to prepare me to accept another “centrist” candidate for president, another 1960s-era Republican who doesn’t care how many people die as long as the economy is growing, you’re right. I am.

You can curse me all you want for refusing to play that game any longer. Somewhere near a half million people have died the same way my son did in these last 11 years.

I do what I do so your child won’t die the way mine did.

I have every right to withhold my vote from people who don’t care enough about these human lives to fight for them.

In fact, I expect the same commitment from everyone who knows we need a universal health care system NOW. Not in another 11 years, but within two.

Believe me, I’d rather be with my son than be battling this kind of ignorance here now.

DO NOT try to convince me to vote for another right-winger for president. The creature currently squatting in the White House is not my fault. I voted for your “centrist” in 2016. You didn’t learn from that defeat. You will not get my vote again unless you put up an acceptable candidate.

Eleven years ago today, I learned what it was to lose all hope. We would have exactly two weeks left with my son.

 

 

Don’t blame me if you put up a candidate I can’t vote for

Until Beto says he will support Medicare for All, he will not get my support. Neither will any other candidate. Not in the primary and not in the general election.

Beto O’Rourke hasn’t said he supports Medicare for All.

Beto O’Rourke won’t get my vote unless he does.

John Hickenlooper said he doesn’t think health care for everyone should be a “litmus test for Democrats.”

John Hickenlooper won’t get my vote.

Jay Inslee has said, “Right now we need to embrace the things that we can have to move toward universal health coverage.”

Jay Inslee won’t get my vote.

Others have said we should “move toward” a single-payer system.

Even those who are willing to improve and expand Medicare want us to take our time getting there.

Unless “move toward” means everyone is covered within two years of your inauguration, you won’t get my vote.

I’m serious about this, and I will not move one bit on it.

A public option is no longer enough. People are dying every damn day while we dither on how we might move forward, while at the same time never moving forward.

It has been nine years since the Affordable Care Act passed. It did get 15 million more people insurance, but those numbers are falling since the current administration decided to sabotage the law, and even having insurance insures little more than the insurance companies’ profit.

How does a person making $10 an hour afford employer-sponsored insurance (which makes the person ineligible to buy affordable insurance through the Marketplace) that costs $700 a month and has a $6,000 deductible?

As one friend said to me last year, “I’d have to take out a $6,000 loan to get sick and that’s before all the co-pays.”

So, we still have about 33 million uninsured in the US, and millions more whose insurance gives them little or no access to health care. If it’s not deductibles and co-pays, it’s in- or out-of network, it’s denial outright denial of claims that the insurance company should pay for, but will deny if it can get away with it. It’s denial of a lifesaving drug because the policy’s formulary is so limited.

Insurance companies are still in charge and we must put an end to that.

And nearly all the Democrats are saying they won’t support an immediate move to Medicare for all. They don’t want to hurt Big Insurance by making it do what it’s supposed to, and they don’t want to get rid of the robber barons who run the for-profit insurance companies. Republicans think everything is fine, so we’re not even going to talk about them here.

Eleven years ago today, I was heading to Cary, where my son lived, so I could take him to his Tuesday chemo appointment. I still had hope we might have a few months left with him, that we might take a road trip during the summer so he could see friends and family in the Northeast one last time.

Mike had been sentenced to death, not because he had committed any crime, but because a birth defect was a pre-existing condition and the poor, struggling insurance companies likely wouldn’t make a profit off of him. So he was condemned to a slow, torturous death.

Doctors had been allowed to turn him away because he couldn’t pay.  The emergency room had met its legal obligation by giving him a laxative instead of looking for the malignant tumor that was blocking his colon.

Medicaid had been allowed to deny him access to care unless he separated from his beloved wife, and the Social Security Administration was allowed to take 36 months to approve his claim. The letter came 11 years ago March 10 — 36 months after he applied following a Stage 3 cancer diagnosis. His first check would come nine days after he died.

But Medicaid — once it had broken up his marriage — paid the drug companies, so they got their profit. The total cost of his chemo alone was about $600,000. The ostomy supply people got paid thousands of dollars over that 36 months, while the only help my son was offered was $10 a month in food stamps. He turned it down.

This is what life looks like for somebody who needs access to health care. This is what death looks like for someone who is denied that access.

People who own homes and have savings are reduced to the poverty in which my son was forced to exist. Most cancer patients go through their entire life’s savings in two years, leaving their families destitute, whether or not they survive.

Medical expenses account for two-thirds of bankruptcies in this nation. You can not be prepared for this unless you’re immensely wealthy, and every one of these Democratic candidates can put together millions of dollars, so they have no idea what it’s like for the rest of us.

I have taken a lot of heat for saying that I will not vote for a person who won’t support an immediate move to single-payer. But scream at me all you like, I will not support anyone who won’t work on fixing this first thing.

I have been patient. But close to a half million people have died since my son did. Jesus, people, how many more will it take before you get it?

Does it have to be your child before you see the scale of this disaster?

No one — I repeat, no one — will get my vote without a promise to make this (and climate change and living wages) a top priority. I can not be mollified with any promises except this one: “I will move on Day 1 to change this health care system to one that will care for everyone. I will not abandon this until we have a system in place.”

If you won’t make that promise, you can’t have my vote. Not in the primaries and not in the general election.

To the DNC: If you force another 1960s-era Republican on me, you will lose my vote. I will not be a good girl and get in line again. It’s up to you to make sure we get a candidate who will work on what 70 percent of voters overall — and 52 percent of Republican voters — want.

I know I’m not alone in this, and if enough of us come out and say we will blame the DNC if we get another “centrist” who won’t act on health care, living wages, voting rights, climate change and the war economy, perhaps the DNC will quit trying to block the candidates who will give us what we want.

If it means another four years of the current administration, it’s your fault, not mine. I am done being nice.

Eleven years ago today, I was packing the car to head out to my son’s. I had no idea that we had just 17 days left with him. I couldn’t imagine life without him, so I began to believe my heart would stop when his did. Part of me still wishes it had.

I wouldn’t wish the pain my family and I have endured on anyone, and for that reason, I will oppose any candidate who won’t promise to make a real solution to this mess a top priority. And a real solution means results within two years. I think that’s perfectly reasonable.

I can’t get my son back, but I can work so no more mothers lose their children the way I lost mine.

If you think you can change my mind, think again. I will not be placated by anything short of universal, affordable access to quality care. The rest of the world has it, and we will too.

 

 

Jailed for justice — this time on Facebook

The US Chamber was so deeply offended by my comments about health care that it apparently reported me to Facebook and I am in jail for I don’t know how long.

I went to post something this morning on Facebook only to discover I can’t post, comment or even like anything.

I’m afraid I’ve been a bad girl. See, the US Chamber of Commerce has been boosting a post about how I need to tell my member of Commerce how terrible a not-for-profit health care system would be and how it would hurt so many businesses.

The damn thing has been on my timeline five or more times every day, so I started commenting on it, mentioning how many people die each year so these businesses — insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers — can make obscene profits while parents like me watch their children die from lack of access to care, about how people with insurance still can’t afford their medications or even recommended care.

I did it three times in the last two days and suddenly, big business is so deeply offended it reports me for harassment. Like their lies on my timeline every day aren’t offensive. Like they’re not being intrusive by spending tens of thousands of dollars to get their lies on everybody’s timeline. I call them out and I get silenced.

So, my son is dead from this for-profit mess and I have to see these US Chamber of Commerce posts all over my timeline, but if I reply with a critical comment, I get booted.

Well, I won’t be silent, not about health care or minimum wage or voting rights, about our so-called justice system, about our violation of human rights in the way we jail immigrant children who have been ripped from their parents’ arms so for-profit prisons can abuse them, or about education or the environment. And I especially will not be silent about the corporate takeover of our government and of every aspect of our lives.

I won’t be silent about Big Business’s takeover of the Democratic Party and the party’s abandonment of its traditional values (check out the 1976 party platform for a synopsis of what our values were just 40 years ago).

And the DNC needs to know that I will not vote for a candidate who will not commit to Medicare for All in the next two years (it’s a big effort, so I’ll allow up to two years to get it up and running), an immediate raise to a $15 minimum wage, with annual $1 raises until the wage reaches what it would be if it had been tied to inflation ($23 right now) and passage of the election reform law the Democrats approved in the House and Mitch McConnell is blocking in the Senate. That has to be followed by a credible effort to address climate change NOW.

The vast majority of Americans want Medicare for All — 70 percent overall, and 52 percent among Republicans. If the DNC continues to try and paint this as leftist and radical, it does not deserve to win an election ever again.

We are not radicals for wanting these things. We should not allow ourselves to be portrayed as such.

When we see articles like the one that appeared in the NY Times in Sunday and one that ran in the Washington Post yesterday, claiming a “centrist” is the only candidate that can defeat the creature currently squatting in the White House, we need to rise up and demand more.

Our positions are reasonable on these issues; the DNC positions are not.

You can try to silence me, but I won’t shut up. I won’t go away. I will continue to call out the lies of the oligarchs who are in control of this country right now until they’re defeated or until they kill me.

And here’s why:

Eleven years ago today, I still held out faint hope that I would have a few months left with my son. We hoped to take a road trip to New England and New York so he could see family and friends there one last time. He needed to gain 2 pounds before his next chemo appointment.

But it was not to be. In six days we would learn that the chemo wasn’t working.

On this day 11 years ago, we had just 20 days left with my son.

 

I am leaving the Democratic Party. Here’s why.

I am done.

I stayed when the Democrats refused to push for a single-payer health care system because they didn’t want to anger Republicans, who they knew would never go for it.

So they didn’t even try.

Instead, we got a system that was designed by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, and the Republicans weren’t even happy with that because they don’t care if people die.

I stayed when the Democrats refused to even look at the war crimes of the Bush Administration because they wanted to look forward, not back.

So the hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in a war for control of oil will go unpunished. The lies, the torture, the illegal prison in Guantanamo Bay will go unanswered.

I stayed when the Democrats manipulated the primary election system to nominate Hillary Clinton, a competent but terribly flawed candidate, simply because it was her turn. That manipulation allowed a malignant, sociopathic, narcissistic, sexual predator to take the White House, assisted by a foreign power.

I stayed when the Democrats didn’t fight harder for my right to control my own body because they didn’t want to offend the fascist “Christians” who want women to be forced to breed cannon fodder for their wars.

I stayed when Democrats refused to fight like hell for a living wage. When I wrote a resolution for an immediate hike to a $15-per-hour minimum wage, others in the party changed it to a desire for that to be phased in over five years.

If you’re making $7.25 an hour — about one-third of what it takes to live comfortably in this country — you need that money NOW, not in five years, when it won’t go nearly as far.

I stayed even though Democrats haven’t even talked about poverty or race in any campaign since — well, hell, I can’t even remember, although I wrote about my disgust in a column after the 1992 election.

I stayed through battle after battle for the soul of this nation where the Democrats refused to even show up.

And now they wonder why voters aren’t enthusiastic enough to vote. Wake up! It’s because no one is fighting for them.

I stayed because I hoped we as a party would demonstrate some sort of moral fortitude and was disappointed again and again.

I stayed as Republicans played their game of making us demonstrate our “morality” while they played dirty tricks and tolerated — even defended — inexcusable lapses in morality by members of their own party.

I stayed even though the Democrats didn’t even call out the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Republicans.

The push for Al Franken to resign was my last straw.

I say this as a woman who has survived countless episodes of sexual violence starting when I was 3 years old.

This was not about sexual improprieties, damn it, it was about manipulating us into getting rid of one of the most effective fighters we have in the Senate. This was a witch hunt designed to co-opt and pervert the #MeToo Movement.

They got what they wanted, and they will seat Roy Moore, who has more than a dozen women testifying he made inappropriate advances toward them while they were still children and he was in his 30s. And they will not investigate the charges against him because they have no conscience and no shame.

And Democrats played right into their hands.

Why couldn’t we have said Franken would be pressured to leave when and if Moore went away?

Why couldn’t we have waited for the investigation Franken himself called for?

The Democratic Party has not fought for anyone but Wall Street since the 1990s. The party has not tried to fix a horribly broken justice system. It has not done anything to stop the slaughter of young men and women of color by a militarized police. It has, in fact, promoted the militarization of police.

The party did not stand up against Bush’s illegal war in Iraq. Its members actually voted to send our people into harm’s way based on lies. And then, when the lies were revealed, it did nothing to rectify the situation.

The party is in the lap of Wall Street. Its policies further the economic inequalities that plague our nation and the world, since it leads the effort to spread the policies of Wall Street around the world.

It has not stood up for me or what I believe in for decades.

Yes, there are differences between the two parties, but not enough to keep me engaged with the Democratic Party. I have resigned my position as an assistant precinct chair.

Last summer my son left the Republican Party for its lack of morality.

Today I do the same as I depart from the Democratic party.

I will fight for the soul of this nation as an unaffiliated voter because the party I supported, both with my vote and with my checkbook, has become as corrupt as the people it claims to oppose.