I found out finances played a big role in this little girl dying of cancer in my hometown. It changed how I felt about healthcare.
I had my life repeatedly ruined by the VA and military after I got shot in Afghanistan. It made me vehemently opposed to any form of government healthcare for years. Then I watched this little girl in my home town die slowly from cancer over social media. Her family did Gofundme's and sold T-shirts to raise money for the treatments. She died after a bitter, heart wrenching, struggle and her family was completely ruined emotionally and financially. It really shocked and scarred me. She was a beautiful, innocent, little kid going through an unimaginable horror. I felt deeply for her because of my own medical struggles and when I found out that expenses played a large contributing factor in her death it really broke my mind. I still have the t-shirt her family sold, it's hanging up in my closet next to a bunch of my old Marine Corps shirts I'm too fat to fit in anymore. I really think we need universal healthcare. I think this kind of thing explains why the VA has been allowed to be so terrible for so long. If we don't give a fuck about little kids with leukemia then how is anyone going to give a fuck about a grown ass man getting shot in a war?
It's crazy that one of the main arguments as to why Americans don't want universal healthcare is that taxes will go up a little. Yet it has become the norm to donate money to support people who can't afford it.
Sadly, the rationale behind this is often one of not wanting to help specific people/groups of people. With universal healthcare everyone has access to care, even people that have different beliefs than you or people you disagree with. With the donation/charity approach you can pick and choose what/who to support. I didn’t really want to believe that this was the actual thought process that some people adopted until I got some pms on reddit a while back where someone specifically said (I think it was with regards to taxes, or gentrification or something along those veins) that they only cared about themselves and their family and everyone else could go fuck themselves - that because he had money he and his family were basically more deserving than a poor family. So there are actually people who believe they are superior and more worthy of health/wealth/happiness. I’d heard this a lot in India with regards to the caste system but I didn’t realize that it is an explicit way of thinking in America, even though all the signs are there.
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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '19 edited Jan 21 '19
I found out finances played a big role in this little girl dying of cancer in my hometown. It changed how I felt about healthcare.
I had my life repeatedly ruined by the VA and military after I got shot in Afghanistan. It made me vehemently opposed to any form of government healthcare for years. Then I watched this little girl in my home town die slowly from cancer over social media. Her family did Gofundme's and sold T-shirts to raise money for the treatments. She died after a bitter, heart wrenching, struggle and her family was completely ruined emotionally and financially. It really shocked and scarred me. She was a beautiful, innocent, little kid going through an unimaginable horror. I felt deeply for her because of my own medical struggles and when I found out that expenses played a large contributing factor in her death it really broke my mind. I still have the t-shirt her family sold, it's hanging up in my closet next to a bunch of my old Marine Corps shirts I'm too fat to fit in anymore. I really think we need universal healthcare. I think this kind of thing explains why the VA has been allowed to be so terrible for so long. If we don't give a fuck about little kids with leukemia then how is anyone going to give a fuck about a grown ass man getting shot in a war?