I've Had It

Recently, I'd sat with my partner as she watched on TV some conservative pundit scream about government making end-of-life decisions, and I'd decided I'd had enough.

It's time for some truth-telling folks.

If we don't have a public health care option by sometime around 2013, the U.S. government's inaction will make my end-of-life decision. I will die.

So I made a video.



It's making the rounds on Facebook. People want to find fault with my plea, but can't quite do so because it has such a human face. They can't argue with the fact that I'm a real live person who will be one of the 18,000 people who die every year in the United States because they don't have health insurance.

Here's my suggestion. If you really want health care reform, then be helpful about how it should be changed. These days, Republicans are claiming they want reform, but they had the White House for the last eight years, and Congress for six of the last eight, and they did nothing to reform how health care is delivered in the United States.

You don't have to be an expert. The only credentials I have in this debate is as a consumer.

In 1993, I was diagnosed with chronic myelogeneous leukemia. At the time, I was told that without a bone marrow transplant, I'd have three to five years to live. The BMT worked for a year and then I had to have a follow-up procedure called Donor Lymphocyte Infusion. That worked for six years until I had to have another DLI, which didn't work. Luckily for me, the FDA approved Gleevec to treat CML that same year, 2001. I've been on it ever since January 2002.

Just so you know, I'm not looking for charity. I'm looking for change.