Let’s all raise our voices

North Carolina still won’t expand Medicaid, even though people die every day here from lack of access to health care. Our legislators are playing political games while they have all the care they need and innocent others die.

I haven’t been writing much lately. I think it’s mostly because I’m frustrated that, 14 years after the death of my son from lack of access to health care, I still can’t make legislators care enough to fix this.

I have held rallies, I have spoken in public at every opportunity to explain how we can fix this. I have been arrrested six times trying to talk to legislators. I’ve never been violent, not have I ever condoned violence. Yet the violence of allowing people to suffer and die because of corporate greed not only continues, but is protected.

But I made a promise to my late son to work on this every day. I’ve been busy organizing, registering voters, speaking out … but it’s gotten really hard to just sit down and write, to tell other people’s stories, and then see the same bad actors getting elected again and again, to see things get worse instead of better.

I was naive enough to believe the Affordable Care Act would improve things but it turned out to be just another way to drive customers to Big Insurance, where customers are required to pay thoudsands of dollars before their insurance company has to shell out a dime.

I used to say the ACA would have saved my son’s life, but that’s no longer the case. An insurance policy no longer offers access to care. Deductoibles soar to $3,000 and above for an infdividual, which means if you don’t have $3,000, you don’t have access to care. This is at a time when nearly half of Americans say they would have to borrow money to pay an emergency expense of $400.

In other words, 14 1/2 years of activism has resulted in nothing but further degredation of the “system.” I know it’s hubris to hope one’s work will result in something positive, but to watch things get worse while tens of thousands die needlessly is downright depressing.

I’ve let it get to me, and it’s time to stop wallowing and start shouting again.

I’m busy registering people to vote right now because this is an election we can not lose. Period. Nothing good will happen on any front if we allow the corporate elite to hold power.

If you’re not registered to vote, do it NOW. And then be sure to vote. If we lose this one, we’re toast.

And if you think I’m too radical, ask yourself how the unnecessary death of your child might affect your outlook.

Still waiting for health care

My late son, Michael, with his niece, Meghan.

Today marks 13 years since my son called me to say he was feeling better because the doctor found and drained a couple quarts of fluid from his abdomen.

We didn’t know why the fluid was there, but in the back of my head was the fact that fluid like that is a symptom of end-stage cancer.

A week later, we found out that was the cause, that the cancer was back and nothing could be done to cure it. He had, at most, a year to live. He would die just six weeks after getting the news.

This year is the 13th time I have relived this seven weeks, and I still have to lament that we are no better off than we were in 2008, when I promised my son I would work for access to health care for every human being.

In fact, things have gotten even worse. Where some 45,000 people were dying every year from lack of access to care in 2008, that number has been revised upward to 68,000 now — and that estimate is from before the pandemic began.

We had 35 million people with no insurance. We still have that many, plus another 45 million or more who can’t gain access to care because of sky-high deductibles. In a time when nearly half of Americans say they can’t pay a $400 surprise bill without borrowing money, 70 percent of employer-sponsored policies have deductibles over $1,500, and the average deductible on a health insurance policy is over $3,000.

That is not access to care.

Today, I live in one of 12 states that have so far refused to expand Medicaid to cover everyone living in poverty. I have tried calling, writing, visiting and pleading with the Republicans in charge to accept the billions of dollars in federal money to cover people whose incomes can’t cover insurance. These are people making minimum wage. Many of them already have chronic conditions that they can’t manage without care, and that will kill them prematurely.

In North Carolina, three of them will die today.

Three more will die tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, just the way my precious son did 13 years ago on April 1.

I have been arrested three times in Raleigh, trying to talk to legislative leaders about access to health care. I was not violent or even threatening. I asked to speak to leaders and was told they weren’t there, even while I could see them sitting there. I offered to wait because what I had to say was so urgent. Instead, I was arrested and hauled off in zip-tie cuffs.

I am forced to relive these last days of his life year after year after year with no end in sight to the carnage caused by our broken system.

I had hoped to see some improvement by now, but the Affordable Care Act has been so sabotaged by insurance companies and other monied interests that we’re actually seeing more people die from lack of access to care than we did 13 years ago, and we have more people who don’t have access to care.

I promised my son I would work for access to care for everyone as long as I have breath in my body. I have kept my promise. But I really hoped we’d have seen some progress by now. Instead, we’ve been skipping happily backwards, giving insurance companies, Big Pharma and the rest of the crooks everything they want, while keeping us fooled that we’re doing better because pre-existing conditions have to be covered and young people can stay on their parents’ plans — as long as their parents can afford to have insurance plans.

I’m exhausted. I’m stressed. I’m grieving. I’m frustrated. I have all but lost hope that we can get anything done.

But I will not stop.

Everyone deserves care.

You can help in this fight. Every one of you can call legislators at the state and national level and let them know you need to see improvements if they want to keep their jobs. Demand that every candidate tell you how they plan to improve health care access.

Then, you need to vote as though health care matters to you, because health care needs to matter to you.

You need to care that people are dying every day from curable and/or preventable causes.

My son would be a lawyer now if he had survived our broken system. He would also be a proud jackass, a master of inappropriate humor and practical jokes, a dedicated volunteer helping people get and stay sober, a man with a brilliant mind and a kind heart.

Those of us who loved him still grieve every day over this hole in our hearts that won’t ever heal.

This has to stop. We have to demand better, and we need to demand it now.

One final belly laugh

Mike being Mike. His main mission in life was to amuse himself and others. He was a proud jackass and I still believe he chose to leave us on April Fool’s Day.

 

It was Sunday on this date 11 years ago. The crew from Savannah spent the morning and early afternoon with us, and when Mike was tired and needed a nap, they headed back south.

I took the opportunity to soak in the hot tub for a bit with two friends who were helping Mike plan his memorial service. He didn’t want to leave anything to chance. That service would reflect his desires for a funeral he’d be sorry to miss.

As we came back into the house, there was an insistent knock on the door, as though someone wanted to deliver an urgent message. When I opened the door, there was a woman I’d seen drive by a couple times, but I didn’t know her. She was tastefully dressed, a little overweight, had an unnatural shade of blonde hair and way too much makeup.

“What the hell are you doing parking all these cars on my street!” she demanded. “People have to drive here, you know. You don’t own the street and I’m getting tired of dodging all these party cars! I don’t know how long you’ve lived here, but you should know we don’t put up with that in this neighborhood …”

She ranted on for a minute or two and when she finally stopped to take a breath, I spoke.

“First of all, this is not your street. My taxes pay for as much of it as yours do,” I said.

She opened her mouth to speak again, her face still angry. I held up my hand.
“Nope,” I said, “I’m not done. These cars belong to friends of my son. They’ve come to say goodbye. He’ll be dead in a few days and then you can have your road back.”

I started to close the door and she put up her hand to stop me.

“Wait! Oh my god! Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes,” I said sweetly, “you can drive carefully so none of these people has to the add the burden of car repairs to that of the grief of losing a friend.”

And I closed the door.

Even 11 years ago, some people were mean-spirited by nature and not afraid to show everyone they encountered that they wanted people to do everything their way.

Later another neighbor would see me outside and ask, “I saw a lot of cars over the last week or so. I know it’s not always a good thing, so I just said a quick prayer that everything’s OK.”

Now, that’s the way to ask why there are so many cars parked on the street.

The nasty neighbor has never spoken to me again.

Mike woke up a little while after the angry neighbor left, and I told him what had happened. He had a good laugh over that.

“Oh, I wish I could have seen her face,” he said. “I’ll bet she was horrified. Good for you, Mom. Good play.”

It would be our final Cancer Card moment, his final belly laugh.

In 48 hours, he would be gone and I would never hear that laugh again.

When people tell me we should fix health care gradually so businesses and the economy don’t get hurt, I ask why they want to put the welfare of corrupt insurance companies and Big Pharma over that of the 35 million Americans who still don’t have access to health care, plus another 12 million or so whose insurance has such high co-pays and deductibles that they can’t afford to use it. That, after all, is the very basis of fascism — money over people, the good of corporations above the welfare of human beings.

Some 30,000-plus people are dying every year the same way my son did. and we have done almost nothing.

Yes, insurance companies can’t deny people with pre-existing conditions insurance anymore. In states where Medicaid has been expanded, poor people finally have real access to care.

But Big Insurance and Big Pharma don’t want these changes to stand and they’re paying out huge amounts of money to walk back what little ground we have gained.

Every day we don’t fix this, people die unnecessarily. Every damn day, more family members and friends go through the hell my family and I have gone through. In fact, about three times every hour, another American dies of lack of access to care, just they way my precious son did.

As I count down these days again every year, I spend a good part of my time in tears.

Why can’t we see that people shouldn’t be dying like this when it would actually be cheaper to take care of them — both economically and morally? I tried to explain this to someone yesterday who just said, “I don’t believe you. We can’t afford it,” and turned her back, completely unwilling to listen to anything not sanctioned by the liars at Fox News. I wanted to scream, to call her a fucking fascist, but I walked away instead.

On this beautiful spring day 11 years ago, I so desperately wanted to hold onto him. I still wish I could go back and get him. I think I’d want to take him along on the coming cross-country road trip with my pregnant granddaughter. I can’t even imagine what an adventure that would have been.

I tried to soak up all I could of him during these final days.

On this Sunday 11 years ago, everybody cleared out. James, Mike’s closest friend, and Janet, who still loved Mike and who was still adored by him, went back to pick up mail and check in with their bosses. Janet’s boss would fire her for not coming in on Monday; James’s boss told him to take whatever time he needed. They were both planning on returning Wednesday. Mike would not be here to greet them.

On this beautiful Sunday 11 years ago, we would have just two days left with Mike.

 

Nobody “just wants a handout.” Nobody.

I will continue to tell my son’s story because no one — no one — should die the way he did. This was almost a year ago, hours after Rev. Barber and I were arrested for refusing to leave the General Assembly Building until we had been allowed to exercise our Constitutional right in North Carolina to speak to lawmakers about expanding Medicaid. 

Ten years ago today was my first day of life without my precious son. It has been difficult every moment of every day. I live on the verge of tears almost constantly.
I have been and will continue to be very public with my grief because Mike’s is far from the only story of death by denial of health care. We got the Affordable Care Act passed, but opponents are still trying to get rid of it, to go back to the days of killing people like my son because they can’t turn him into a profit-maker. He was denied care until his cancer had spread. That’s when he could turn a profit for Big Pharma. Taxpayers couldn’t spend $1,000 a year to prevent his cancer, but when Big Pharma could make a profit off him, taxpayers were forced to pay more than a half million dollars for his chemo.
Go ahead, call me a conspiracy theorist, but you won’t change my mind.
Here’s what you need to know if your heart aches for me and the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose loved ones have died and continue to die the same way he did and who endure the same pain I do:
Profit-mongers are still trying to kill the poor, the elderly and people with disabilities.
The Republicans’ “health care” bill takes money from Medicaid, the federal insurance program for poor people and people with disabilities. If you think Medicaid is for people who “just want a handout,” think again. Medicaid pays the bills for people who live in nursing homes and for people who live with disabilities. For those who have it, Medicaid is a lifeline.
But the income limits are so low that even disability can put a person over the top and leave them without access to health care for two years, until Medicare kicks in. That’s right, Medicare doesn’t kick in for 24 months after a person begins to receive disability payments. I’ve known people who have fallen into that loophole, and some of them die from lack of care.
Remember, my son, who had no job and was too sick to work, still had to leave his wife to get Medicaid, and his disability took 37 months to be approved. His first check came nine days after he died.
He never wanted a goddamn handout, OK? He wanted to work and pay his way. Until he got sick, he thought the government had no business getting into health care. He changed his mind when he saw what really happens to people, as it happened to him.
I have a friend in Rhode Island, which has expanded Medicaid, thank God, who has a rare disease and can’t work. Without Medicaid, he will die. He is a passionate, funny, smart, kind and caring person. He doesn’t want a handout, he just wants to survive.
My stepfather and my mother both needed to be in a nursing home at the end of their lives. They had both worked and retired in their 70s. Should they have been sent home to die?
If that’s what you think, then go ahead and set your elders and anyone with a disability out onto an ice floe now, because you are condemning them to death.
My son has been gone a decade, and it hurts today every bit as much as it did 10 years ago.
I fought for the passage of the Affordable Care Act because it would lower the death toll, and it has, by more than 20,000 human beings every year.
People who need health care don’t deserve to be turned away. No human being should suffer the way my son did. No human being deserves to die from the greed of Big Pharma, Big Insurance or any other greed-driven entity.
Health care is not a “handout,” it is a basic human right. If you don’t agree with that you are wrong, and if you refuse to listen, you are willfully ignorant — and still woefully wrong.
Let me repeat what I’ve said a thousand times or more since my son died from medical neglect: Nobody wants a handout. Nobody. In all the years as a reporter working on social justice issues, I never met a single person who just wanted a handout. No once. In the decade since that I have worked as an advocate, I haven’t met anyone who just wants a handout. If you think you know someone who just wants a handout, get to know them better because I assure you, they don’t.
I can imagine that some people get so weary from fighting that it might seem as though they’re just looking for a handout, and I have seen that, but no one starts out that way.
If you want to be able to consider yourself a moral person and you think it’s OK to let people die, you need to change your ways.
I start out the second decade without my precious son the same way I started out the first, immobilized by my grief and determined to stop the carnage.
I will fight these purveyors of misery and death going forward as passionately as I have fought for the last 10 years. I will not stop, I will not step back. That’s my promise to my son and I will keep it to my dying breath.

Negotiating our care in a broken system

Mission Health System, the largest hospital and the largest employer here in the Asheville region, has announced it may leave the Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina network in October.

That has a lot of people in a panic, since Mission is our only option here and BCBS is pretty much the only insurer in the state — three-quarters of all people with health insurance here have it through them.

Leaving the network would mean closing the hospital. It couldn’t survive because it wouldn’t be able to collect the money it’s owed by patients whose insurance only covers half the cost of their bills.

On the other hand, this dramatic announcement allows Mission to tell the public how desperate things are becoming here.

Here’s why: Our state’s legislature has rejected the billions in federal dollars to expand Medicaid.

Before the Affordable Care Act, the federal government reimbursed hospitals and clinics for the money they spent caring for people who couldn’t pay. The ACA’s provision for expanding Medicaid was meant to replace this money, but the Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid expansion couldn’t be mandatory, so mostly Republican states, mostly in the South, decided to shoot themselves in the foot and not expand.

Now, we’re still paying our full share into the Medicaid expansion pot, but not a penny of that money is coming back into North Carolina. Instead, it’s going to states like Arizona that have expanded Medicaid, and North Carolina’s hospitals are losing billions of dollars a year.

What’s worse is that about five people in this state die every single day — up to 2,000 a year — from lack of access to care.

Instead of lobbying the legislature to expand Medicaid, BCBS is insisting this is not its problem, and Mission is left to try and survive by cutting services.

Already, several small hospitals in the state have either closed or been bought up by larger hospital systems like Mission that can weather the storm longer than they can.

But this can’t continue. Eventually, even the wealthiest people here won’t have access to services because they won’t be available.

I know this tactic of brinksmanship. I saw it as a reporter. I would get press releases from the hospital claiming the insurance company wanted to reduce rates to the point where the hospital wouldn’t be able to survive. On the other hand, I got press releases from the insurance companies saying the hospital was guilty of gross inefficiency.

Once the contracts were signed, usually within days of the deadline, everyone was buddy-buddy again.

One year, the CEO of BCBS came to Asheville for a Chamber of Commerce event and praised Mission as one of the most efficient hospitals in the nation. This was just four months after a press release with the same CEO saying Mission was one of the worst.

So, with press release in hand, I approached him after his speech and asked if he had any thoughts on Mission’s dramatic turnaround in just four months.

He had no comment.

This is a game — a dangerous game with human beings as pawns, but a game nevertheless.

The hospital needs higher reimbursements to cover the losses from the state legislature’s recalcitrant position. The insurance company can’t keep paying more without some serious rate hikes.

Everyone involved here is guilty of greed or of trying to make a political point at the expense of human life.

It is all deeply, deeply immoral, but I think people need to understand who’s at fault here and what could happen.

The Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect, but it’s better than what we had before. The rate of people with insurance are at an historic high in the country right now. If all the states expanded Medicaid, insured rates would be over 90 percent.

In states that have expanded Medicaid, insurance rates are rising far more slowly and health care expenses are leveling off. In states like this one, health care costs continue to spiral out of control and people continue to die.

So, who’s pro-life now?

 

I can’t believe I’m still protesting this …

Photo by Phil Fonville. We gathered on Bicentennial Mall in Raleigh Tuesday to protest the lack of affordable health care for a half million people in this state.

 

I realized a couple weeks ago that I’ve been protesting war, poverty and misogyny for a half century.

I mentioned it to Rev. William Barber, who will leave the NC NAACP presidency next month to head the resurrection of Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign. King started the Poor People’s Campaign 50 years ago, and now I get to work with Rev. Barber to help revive it.

Rev. Barber, who’s 10 years younger than I am, just smiled, put his arm around my shoulders and told me he loves me for my passion.

A half century of trying to make things better and we’re headed right back to where we started, with incarceration as the new slavery, with women being shut out from decisions about their bodies, with voting rights skewed toward the wealthy and white, with children going to bed hungry, elders having to choose between food and vital medications, with wages far too low to cover necessities, with the poor and sick blamed for their plight and with war looming on the horizon.

I am horrified by the state of things, but I cannot give up. I stand with the photo of my late son and explain to anyone who asks that he died from lack of access to care.

So, even in the pouring rain, I went to the rally, and, as so often happens at Moral Monday rallies, the rain let up for the two hours we were there.

But, as so often happens with Moral Monday events, the legislators left early and locked up the building rather than risk having to talk to any of us. So, we had a huge poster with a few facts about what their refusal to expand Medicaid has done to this state, and the 200-plus people who attended the rally each signed it.

We left it tacked to the front door of the building as the chief off the General Assembly police looked on. It’s OK — he’s used to us and seems to bear us no ill will, but he will arrest us if told to do so. He has arrested me twice — so far.

Anyway, because we couldn’t get into the building last night, we will be back next Tuesday, and we will go into the building and sit down and wait to address our legislators, as is our right under the North Carolina State Constitution. They might arrest us again, but we will not back down. Lives are at stake here — a half million of them.

If you want to participate in the sit-in, be at the Bicentennial Mall (across the street from the General Assembly Building) at 10 a.m. next Tuesday. If you can’t participate in the sit-in, you can still attend the health care rally at 6 p.m.

 

 

 

It was like talking to a wall.

 

me_n_pat.jpg

I had a choice this morning. I could stand with protesters outside the Governor’s Western Residence in Asheville or I could try to get into the open house to address him personally.

I decided to try and get to him.

We started driving to the residence, but when we turned up Town Mountain Road, we were told we’d never get in unless we went to First Baptist Church and waited for the shuttle.

We waited for almost an hour. The event was supposed to start at 9:30, but we didn’t get onto the shuttle until 10:20. When we got to the house, we were told we had 15 minutes, so I went outside, where the governor was standing beside the fire pit.

I approached.

“Hi, I’m Pat,” he said.

“I’m Leslie,” I said and lifted up the photo of my late son. “This is Mike, who died after being denied access to care.”

He noticed a microphone on my collar. Robin Carter had placed it there in case she was able to video the encounter. She wasn’t allowed.

“I’m not talking to anyone who’s miked,” he said.

“Well, perhaps you’ll listen,” I answered.

I told him about Mike and about how five to seven people are dying every day in this state because he and his colleagues in the General Assembly have refused to expand Medicaid.

He countered that he tried to talk to President Obama about adding a work requirement, and I told him 70 percent of people who would be eligible for Medicaid work already, and virtually all of the rest are unable to work. I told him how hard a worker my son was, and that he was never looking for a handout, just someone who would be willing to help him stay alive.

“People who need Medicaid aren’t lazy, and they’re not greedy,” I said.

I didn’t add that the people who block access to health care are the takers. I was trying to be calm and polite.

“Well, Medicaid was a mess before I took office,” he said.

Yes it was, because in 2010, the Republicans took over the General Assembly and slashed funding so badly that the Republican secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services resigned rather than preside over such carnage. Before 2010, North Carolina’s Medicaid program was a national model.

But I didn’t have time to tell him that because he had already interrupted me to say he’s expanding access to Medicaid for people with autism.

I told him my benchmark is whether it would have given my son access to care, and adding in a few hundred people wouldn’t have done that. I also told him I don’t think privatizing Medicaid will work any better than privatizing mental health care a decade ago did.

He was happy to talk about the implosion of the state’s mental health system because that was done before he took office. I could see his eyes light up.

“Yes! That system is a mess, and so is treatment for addiction,” he said. “We really need to do something about that.”

But since the majority of people who have addiction don’t respond to treatment the first time, what should we do?

Prevention. That 14-year-old who had surgery probably doesn’t need opiates to deal with his pain, at least not for more than a few days, McCrory said. You give it to him for a month or more and you’ve created another addict.

Of course, this means we can’t have legalization of pot and the windfall of tax money that would come with it, but that’s an issue for another day.

My friends, Robin Carter and Matt Graunke wanted to talk about HB2, but we got the same answers he’s been giving to the media.

“I was on NPR,” he said, as though NPR only interviews reasonable people. He also said the law is about privacy, but when challenged about the privacy of a trans person who only wants to go into a stall and pee, that was different, of course.

He talked about wanting to protect women and both Robin and I said we had been assaulted or abused in places other than rest rooms by people our families knew and trusted, and that since we are adults now, we think women should have been consulted about whether we even think we need protection from trans people in bathrooms.

Frankly, I think we need protection from people like the governor and his friends in the General Assembly, because while they’re distracting us with talk about trans people in bathrooms, innocent people are dying — five to seven people every day, week in and week out, year after year.

When he said he felt sorry about how my son died, my question was whether he would be willing to say that to the 8,000 families of people who have died since he signed the law denying Medicaid expansion. Every one of those families is in just as much pain as mine.

But, hey, after many, many attempts to talk to him, after two arrests for “trespassing” on public property, after being locked out of the state house so he didn’t have to talk to me, I finally got some face time with him.

I only wish I had been able to make him see how his policies are killing innocent people.

At least he didn’t tell me he’s pro-life.

Too little, too late, Governor

Gov. Pat MccCrory waves at the camera after giving my friend, Jamie Sohn, a plate of cookies. I love the look on Jamie's face.

Gov. Pat MccCrory waves at the camera after giving my friend, Jamie Sohn, a plate of cookies. I love the look on Jamie’s face.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has issued a couple of executive orders this week that I’m sure he thinks will win him back some support.

Unfortunately, it’s far too little and way, way too late.

On Monday, he announced a limited “expansion” of Medicaid services, which would add people with autism, plus increase funding for substance abuse treatment.

He proposed increasing access to Naloxone, which reverses opioid and heroin overdoses, saying he wants to save lives.

Big deal, Governor. There’s still the prickly issue of that half million people with no access to health care, and up to 2,800 of them are estimated to die every year, or up to seven people every single day. Can you tell us why you don’t care about saving those lives?

The governor also said he has met with President Obama about a Medicaid waiver, which would let the state expand Medicaid with its own rules. Those rules would require Medicaid recipients to work to get coverage, and the president rejected that.

Now, the president doesn’t have the power to reject the provision on his own, but he certainly knows what would pass muster with the Center for Medicaid Services, and a work requirement won’t fly.

Thing is, most poor people do work. Many have more than one low-wage job and still live below the poverty level. Many can’t find full-time work because so many companies have stopped hiring full-time employees so they don’t have to offer health benefits. That’s why Medicaid expansion is so important.

The people who are dying are hard working. They’re not lazy, they’re not morally inferior, they’re just poor, and a big part of that is because the GOP has refused to increase the minimum wage to a living wage, which it was meant to be when it was enacted under Franklin Roosevelt.

That brings us to Hate Bill 2.

On Tuesday, the governor issued a video statement announcing he would seek to repeal a portion of the law, which was passed in a single day in a special session, and signed by him as soon as he could get it to his desk.

“I will immediately seek legislation in the upcoming short session to reinstate the right to sue for discrimination in North Carolina state courts,” he said.

But that doesn’t fix the power grab that denies towns and counties the ability to set their own minimum wage, among other things, and it leaves transgender people with no safe place to pee, and still doesn’t protect LGBT people or veterans.

They passed this abomination knowing there would be backlash, and I’m willing to bet they decided before it ever passed which parts of it they would be willing to sacrifice if things got too heated.

Sorry, Governor, but you won’t win back a whole lot of support with these feeble moves, and the lost business and the lost respect won’t be won back, either. You have made this once proud state a laughingstock, and you’re going home in November.

#OneTermPat.

 

Just expand Medicaid already!

Photo by the (Asheville) Citizen-Times There I am, holding Mike's photo, wearing my T-shirt and looking hardass.

Photo by the (Asheville) Citizen-Times
There I am, holding Mike’s photo, wearing my T-shirt and looking hardass.

I never thought I was a radical, but I can feel myself trending in that direction.

I took part in yesterday’s Medicaid Expansion Coalition’s Day of Action, but the action was a spate of press conferences. We were all over Facebook and the evening news. It raised awareness. But no one in the state legislature likely changed their minds about expanding Medicaid.

Dr. Shannon Dowler, medical director of Blue Ridge Community Health Services, was eloquent as she spoke about the people she cares for. It was heartbreaking to hear the stories. I wish legislators had heard her.

This event was not my normal way of approaching Medicaid expansion. I guess it made me realize how my life gave birth to a radical, albeit a nonviolent radical.

I didn’t speak at the event, and I’m glad about that. The event’s organizers know me. I am not one to mince words or speak in approved phrases. Most of the other organizations have programs serving thousands of low-income people. They have a lot to lose. I don’t.

So, I stood behind the speakers, wearing my “Expand Medicaid” T-shirt and holding a photo of my son.

Plenty of words have been spoken over the last two and a half years, and plenty of actions taken. Still, the governor and legislative leaders refuse to expand Medicaid, an action that would allow a half million people access to health care.

People are dying every day. In North Carolina alone, five to seven people die each day from lack of access to health care. The governor signed a law when he first took office that ceded his authority to expand Medicaid to the legislature, and legislators have made it clear they don’t care about these lives.

Perhaps if they had sat next to their dying child, holding his hand as he breathed his last and slipped away, these legislators would have more of a heart for these lives we’re losing.

Instead, they assume it can’t happen to them, that the people who are dying somehow brought their poverty on themselves and deserve their fate. Then they go to church and proclaim themselves “pro-life.”

Since I represent no one but myself here, let me say this:

If you aren’t in favor of saving these precious lives, you are NOT pro-life.

When you say people don’t deserve health care, you lose all credibility with me.

If your support for life ends at the end of the birth canal, you are anti-life.

When you call yourself a follower of Christ and then allow people to die just so you can make a mean-spirited, cynical political statement, you’d better stop and read Matthew 25:31-46.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, this is the passage where Jesus says, “Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do also unto me.”

It’s the text where Jesus describes Judgment Day, and it has informed my actions all my life. I’m not perfect at loving everyone. It isn’t always easy helping “the least of these” because their numbers are increasing so fast and their stories are so heartbreaking.

Some of my colleagues, whose life’s work is helping those in need, have to be very careful of what they say and do because they need the funding to continue their work.

I’ve already lost the worst thing anyone can lose; I’ve lost my child. Nothing can be worse than that.

 

 

 

At least I’m not alone

Michael, age 3, playing with his food.

Michael, age 3, playing with his food.

This is a hard time of year for me. Tomorrow is Mike Day, the anniversary of my son’s death.

I think he chose April 1 to go; he was a proud jackass. He loved turning things upside-down and inside-out for a good laugh. His best friend, James, eulogized him as a jackass and everyone laughed and applauded.

I don’t know why this doesn’t get any easier. I honestly thought that after seven ears I would miss him a little less, that the edges would have worn off the pain, but that’s not so. I think of him every day, sometimes every hour, and on days near the anniversary of his death, it’s more like every moment.

At least I’m not alone.

I’m not talking about the friends and family who have stood by me and held me up, although I treasure them; I’m talking about the hundreds of thousands of others whose family members and friends have died the way Mike did.

Before the Affordable Care Act, the death toll was 45,000 a year, and each one was loved by somebody. Each person was adored by friends and family.

The death toll is lower now — about 17,000 a year in states that have refused to expand Medicaid.

Marketing people tell us we need to use the phrase, “close the coverage gap,” but that doesn’t say it any better than “expand Medicaid.”

How about this? It’s time to stop this immoral and inhuman killing of people just because they can’t help enrich insurance companies and Big Pharma.

Or, this for all the “Christians” who think we don;t need to ensure access to care for everyone: Who would Jesus turn away?

And for those of you who are “pro-life,” but think that doesn’t include access to health care: You are most decidedly NOT pro-life, even though you have tried to make the definition only about abortion.

chose not to have an abortion when I was advised to do so, and you “pro-lifers” did nothing to help him get the care he needed after he was born.

You are not pro-life.

Maybe if I was alone, if my son’s case was an aberration, it would be easier.

But my friend, Lila suffers every day because she can’t get insurance. The pain she endures makes it impossible for her to work full-time, and without that income she is eligible for neither premium subsidies nor Medicaid.

My friend, Crystal, is just 30 years old and the mother of two. She has cervical cancer and can’t get treatment because even though she works, she can’t get insurance or Medicaid. She’ll likely die the way my son did, and she will leave behind two orphaned children.

If their lives don’t matter to you, you are not pro-life.

If their lives do matter, you need to do something about it. Our state legislators say the people don’t want to care for the poor because they’re lazy bums.

What they don’t tell you is that 88 percent of people living in poverty have low-wage jobs. And in this so-called economic recovery, most of the jobs being created are low-wage. Fully one-third of people in poverty have two full-time workers in the home and still live below the poverty level.

We need to call and visit our legislators and tell them they’re going home in 2016 if we don;t have expanded Medicaid by then. And then you need to work hard for the candidate who will expand access to health care.

We did it here in Buncombe County. We sent home Tim Moffitt and Nathan Ramsey and replaced them with people who will vote to close the coverage gap, expand Medicaid, stop the senseless and immoral carnage — however you want to phrase it.

My precious son has been gone seven years. I had hoped we would have made more progress by now.