Movie City News columnist Kim Voynar explains her current medical condition and crisis better than I can summarize it here. Read what she's posted and then come back. Nothing I say below is necessarily how Kim feels, it's how I feel when I read a story similar to hers.
I barely know Kim. I briefly had a "hi, how are ya, nice to meetcha" moment with her at South by Southwest a couple years ago. She is, for me, the new face of the current health care debate.
Should her life or death be decided by her "choosing" to get divorced? For having four kids? For having cancer? The weakest argument going around equates the sick and suffering as "bad actors" or "the abusers in the system". That analysis makes me want to grasp those people firmly by the shoulders and ask if they've truly lost their minds.
Sarah Palin didn't invent Death Panels all on her own, they already exist. The Death Panels are the boards of the major insurers who deny coverage or procedures to people who need them most. How dare Those Against Reform decide who lives and who dies? Without a compelling reason to find a cure to deadly diseases, major insurers and pharmaceutical companies will choose not to try. People prolonging their lives before a certain death are far too profitable to give up as "customers". Symbolically, we the people should file an anti-trust lawsuit against the healthcare industry, as they've cornered the death market.
A good friend of mine died of brain cancer earlier this year. My mother-in-law's life was saved by being successfully treated for renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer) last year. Even before either of them got sick, the stories of suffering in the face of indifferent insurance companies made me furious. The opposition to healthcare reform calling for "the right reform" isn't proposing an alternative, so logically speaking, they're pushing the status quo. Those people make me wish I didn't work a day job and had the opportunity to go around and listen to people's concerns about healthcare and dispel ridiculous rumors without the baggage of being a politician. It makes me wish I had a broad platform to make my voice heard that's free from the insanity and inanity of anonymous message boards and comment threads. This will have to do, I suppose.