#Healthcare Justice

[vaspider]

Tonight, the night before Election Day 2024 in the US, I am thinking about my stepkid.

I am thinking about the phone call they made to us earlier this year, the one where they told us they'd gone to the hospital thinking they had appendicitis and found out, instead, that a zygote - a tiny splodge of cells - had taken up residence not in their uterus but in a fallopian tube. The one where our kid said they were waiting for their partner to arrive, hoped that said partner would get there before the docs took our kid back to terminate that pregnancy, & assured us that they'd be okay.

After all, our kid lives in a state with choice measures embedded in state law. That pea-sized blot of tissue doesn't have more right to their health than they do. Nobody is standing between them and their doctors. They made a decision, and that was that.

In this tiny tragedy, the kind that plays out dozens of times a day at minimum across the country, we only had to worry about the small risk of surgery complications. We didn't have to worry about Ken Paxton threatening to charge their doctors with felonies. We didn't have to think, "What if the hospital's legal team doesn't think an ectopic pregnancy - which is never ever viable and must be terminated before it kills our kid - is really that big of a deal?" We didn't have to worry that they live in a state where ob-gyns are fleeing, leaving few experts behind, as has happened in Idaho.

We didn't have to watch our kid vomit up black blood before dying the day after their baby shower the way Neveah's mom did. We didn't have to pray in a waiting room (while doctors took our kid apart until their heart stopped because the doctors waited too long out of fear of anti-choice laws) until a doctor came to tell us we'd have to bury them the way that Amber's mom did. We aren't having to pick up our lives after fully treatable miscarriage-related sepsis took them from us the way that Josseli's husband and daughter must.

I could go on for far, far too long.

Listen. If you are a single-issue non-voter and have already decided that "both parties are the same" or whatever other thing you've told yourself so you can sleep at night, smug and secure, then I can't reach you and I can't help you. But if you genuinely think that your votes don't matter, if you're just suffering from a bout of overwhelm or apathy, if you're too young to remember the 2000 election and can't see that Dobbs is a direct result of that election and every one that's followed, please, I am fucking begging you.

I didn't really talk about this when it happened. I mentioned something briefly, maybe. The posts I've started writing about it are still in my drafts. It was too fresh, too frightening. It's not any less frightening now, honestly - because if this week doesn't end with President Kamala Harris, we're headed for a national abortion ban, at the minimum - but it's not about how fucking frightened I was or how sad and bewildered I was to realize that my kid was going through this crisis in a nation more hostile to them than when I needed a D&C for an abortion at 21, in 1998.

It's about stopping this chapter of this fucking bullshit and at least finding some new fucking bullshit.

Vote, dammit.

Do the other work on Wednesday. Tomorrow, the work is to vote.

[trixiesol-blog]

[fullpenguincupcake]

Delay, deny, depose: lessons for the new year

In the world of healthcare, delay stalls justice, deny erodes trust, and depose dismantles accountability; reminding us of the courage needed to confront broken systems. As we step into the new year, may we resolve to demand transparency, prioritize compassion, and ensure that every life receives the dignity it deserves. Change begins when we refuse to let the cycles of delay, deny, and depose define our future.

[heterorealism]

(via (1) Pinterest)

[short-stories-by-ezra]

Through My Eyes: The Emotional Toll of HIV/AIDS Policy and the Fight for Visibility

Part 1 – The Lifeline They’re Cutting Away For more than 20 years, PEPFAR (The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) has been a lifeline for millions.  It has saved over 25 million lives, provided access to life-saving HIV treatment, and brought us closer than ever to controlling the HIV epidemic.  Worldwide. But now, that lifeline is being severed. In recent weeks, U.S. foreign aid for…

[thelovesystem]

Well, Americans, it’s happening. The House just introduced “H.R.722 - To implement equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.” to federally ban abortion.

CALL/EMAIL YOUR REPS DAILY, whether they’re MAGA or Liberal, make it clear how important bodily autonomy and women’s health and lives are to us.

[saywhat-politics]

Last week, it emerged that health insurance leaders pressured the DOJ to bring federal charges against Luigi Mangione. This week, I discovered the top 3 officials at DOJ all collected paychecks from healthcare companies before serving in government: shorturl.at/lgLIU

[apersnicketylemon]

I want to make something really clear that I think Anti-Choice people have failed to understand that Pro Choicers definitely saw coming.

An exception for Rape, Life of the Mother, and Incest mean nothing when you have to prove it in a court of law, or get a team of lawyers and judges to sign off on it which can take weeks or even months.

Weeks a person dying hasn't got. Women are now dying. Actually dying. Because hospitals legally could not save their lives until they could wake up a judge and get their lawyers, and another sides lawyers awake and up and figured out if it was actually necessary or not. All people with no understanding of medicine, and no attatchment to the person suffering who simply doesn't want to die.

There's a lot more I could cover, like the increase in illegal abortion, abortion tourism, the massive increase in infant abandonment... but I'm going to leave it here.

People are dying. People who should be alive. Who would be alive if abortion was legal and the hospital could have simply treated their patient without waiting for a dozen men with no medical experience in another building to decide if their patient actually needs treatment or not. And yes they do have to wait. Because if they don't they get charged with murder for trying to save a life.

Your policies are killing people. Not theoretical people. Not fetuses with no conscious thought or pain. Adults with lives. Teenagers with a whole life ahead of them. Mothers with children who need them. Real people with conscious thought, with fear, with pain. People who meet every definition of personhood.

[johnny-depp-is-loved]

Healthcare is basic human rights. Healthcare should not be exclusive to only the rich.

[graysbullshit]

I have been vacinated about 30-45 times in my life. Do you know how much I paid for it? Not a dime.

My great-aunt had a tumor and had to treat it with radiotherapy and chemotherapy. She was fully recovered. Do you know how much she paid for it? Not a dime.

One of Brazil's most famous tv show hosts who has been in show business for over 40 years with over 30 milion views had a kidney transplant this year. Do you know how much he paid for the transplant? Not a dime.

When my mother is bored she walks a block up to the public health center and gets a check up. Do you know how much she pays for this? Not a dime.

My mother has been going to the psychologist. Do you know much she has paid? Not a dime.

Does this enrage you? It should. When Luigi said "this" was a insult to the American people's intelligence he probably meant the mediatic circus around his person, but if we're to be honest you could say the same about USA's healthcare politics. Do not let them tell you it "has to be this way" and "there is no other way." There is. You CAN have better healthcare. You DON'T have to sell your house to pay your medical debt. They are MAKING you do this ON PURPOSE. Don't forget that.

I don't usually have any kindness to spare USAians, but we are with you in this one. The world is watching. You CAN turn this around! Don't let them desincourage you.

[lazydeerperson]

For the people, by the people.

[trixiesol-blog]

[fullpenguincupcake]

The public option: luigi’s fight for healthcare justice

healthcare for all, not just for some - luigi’s vision lives on.

[troythecatfish]

[texas-gothic]

This Luigi business has, I think, really exposed something we all knew about in the US justice system, but has for so long been pretended to not exist by all of this country's communication and media controllers.

Despite the fact that we are all meant to be private citizens, all held within equal respect by and to the law, there are some very different classes of people as far as courts are concerned.

If Luigi Mangione had shot some middle class, pencil pushing office schlub or retail salesman, there'd have been a however temporary stink made about on the television. And if they ever did catch him, he'd be dragged through the courts, and maybe become the center of a "shame on you" piece on the 6 o'clock news. But in all likelihood they never would have bothered to catch him. They'd say "we're doing our best" and they'd forget about it. No manhunt, no media circus, no $60,000 bounty put on his head by the FBI.

If Luigi Mangione had shot, say, a black man, nothing would have happened at all. It's unlikely we would even have any inkling of it.

But Luigi Mangione didn't kill someone from the lower class, he didn't even kill someone from the middle class. He killed Bryan Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a Fortune 500 company. He killed a nobleman. And that means he's to be dragged into court surrounded by a small army of guards, charged with crimes wholly unrelated to whatever he's allegedly done, and before all of that, made the subject of a national manhunt.

If nothing else, it's become abundantly clear just who the courts consider to be worth their time.

[pandemic-info]

Excerpts:

“Some things that I love that I can’t do any more are exercising, lifting weights, hiking and reading an hour a day,” he said. ...“Having to still think about Covid fucking sucks. Trust me, I get it,” he said. “But empathy alone is not enough without actions of solidarity.”

According to one report, 400 million people have been affected by long Covid. But it is under-diagnosed and misunderstood. McGorry said in the video he hesitated to speak publicly about his health “primarily because of fear of career discrimination and also people making assumptions about what I can and can’t do”.

...having to convince people that accessibility and disability justice are social justice issues in the first place is incredibly dehumanizing and exhausting and usually very fruitless.”

One of the most common ways disabled people are discriminated against is people making assumptions about their capacities and not consulting them about it.

I’m new to experiencing it first-hand, but a lot of the systemic oppression that disabled people face is neglect. It may not be outright vitriol. If you don’t take the action to make the space accessible, we can’t be there, or we can’t be there safely. We have to risk our lives.

We’re used to being told that you get healthier by putting in effort. But with long Covid, to recover, many experts say to do less and rest. I was a personal trainer for a decade, including during my first two seasons of Orange Is the New Black. I was heavily indoctrinated into diet culture and thin supremacy. We’re taught you just have to keep pushing. A person that I help care for is mostly housebound, and often bed-bound. I was in a session with them with a neurologist recently, who was like, “But you should get up and walk around the block.” So it runs deep.

As an able-bodied person, you trust that your doctor is going to steer the ship if something pops up. But if I were to wait for them and not be proactive, my health would have continued to decline. So, for me, it looks like reading studies, following people who are at the forefront of the science, and cross-referencing with other people in the [long Covid] community. 

Before I had long Covid, when I was unconsciously invested in ideas of health and goodness and virtue, there was pride in being a good patient at the doctor. ... The more you have a complex illness, the more you end up having to push and advocate for certain things, including masking in the offices, which is absolutely exhausting.

I think people don’t understand that. You’re asking, “Hey, would you mind protecting my life?” When someone’s like, “Oh God, what a pain in the ass,” experiences like that make you reticent to ask in the future.

If we’re only focused on individual change and not on the systemic issues that actually have a larger impact on health, like poverty and lack of access to medical care, then what we’re doing is not really about health. It’s about thinness and desirability and social status. If we don’t have accessible healthcare, both for cost and when people feel safe to show up and not get infected, what we’re doing is not health. We’re excluding the people that actually need it the most, which in any other social justice issue we would understand is a huge fucking problem and that something needs to be done about it.

...it really comes down to respirators and getting updated vaccines, which most people just do not do these days. The science is really clear that getting Covid over and over again is not good for anyone. I... And I understand that it emotionally costs something – to admit that there is a risk disrupts the illusion of denial and back to normal.