Open caskets

If you live in a state that has so far refused to expand Medicaid, your insurance rates could double — or more — this year. Don’t blame Obama; blame the anti-lifers you elected to your state legislatures and governors’ mansions. They have the care they need and always will, but they deny it to others.

You have the vote. You can send them home and replace them with people who do care. 

Meanwhile, consider this photo and how unnecessary his suffering — and that of those who loved and miss him — was and is.

I have been hesitant to post anything that could be political on here because it is going to be graded, but health care access is political, so being sick is political.  My lack of access to the care I have needed over the years has been the result of politics and if I die because I could not afford the care I need, that will be a political act, although not by choice.  I am waiting now for my application for benefits to be processed since I am unable to work enough to afford healthcare even with exchange coverage, but we don’t live in a state that expanded Medicaid to cover families like mine, which make too little for subsidies but too much for the old limits on income for Medicaid.

This protest has needed to happen and I hope that, if my liver fails before we have found a solution to this mess, my family will make sure my service is open casket.  It is important for people to be aware of what lack of medical care looks like.  I want people to know, when they consider how to vote, that people like me will die with jaundice, ascites, raw patches from pruritis, wasting, hair loss, and every other visible symptom of untreated or undertreated chronic illness.  The reality of our national and state politics is that those most affected by these policies are too weakened by them to protest effectively, but death has eloquence.

I am grateful to people who share stories like this one, so that their tragedy can help inform communities about the effects of politics on the lives and bodies of the chronically ill.