I am a young oncology patient and healthcare blogger. Thank you Moses 2317. I posted your congressional call list on my blog and mobilized scored of young adult cancer patients to make calls.
The cancer community is shockingly silent when it comes to mobilizing patients around healthcare issues. Most cancer organizations are more worried about offending the slim minority opposed to healthcare reform than they are about fighting for the interests of their uninsured young adult constituents – many of whom are diagnosed at later more advanced stages of cancer because of lack of coverage. Leading up to the vote (and throughout this entire debate) advocates in the cancer community tweeted about their mocha lattes and walks for the cure, but not a word about reform.
I am again so grateful to Moses2317 and Tim F. at Balloon Juice for posting that targeted call list, which I circulated widely to the young adult cancer community. Today I am flooded with emails, phone calls, and facebook messages from 20 and 30-something cancer patients thanking me for posting that list and enabling them to make calls and make a difference!
Kairol Rosenthal
Everything Changes:
The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20s & 30s
Reader Interactions
36Comments
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Trinity
Wow.
Power to the people!
JAHILL10
Activism is a beautiful thing. I think the more people hear voices like hers the more people will realize that the cruelty of our old system is nothing we will miss.
metricpenny
My warmest appreciation to Tim F. too.
While your information and strategies were not successful with my MG3 (Marietta, GA three – Rep. Price and Senators Chambliss and Isakson) I am grateful for the assistance you provided.
Brien Jackson
I call bullshit. Clearly she’s really just happy she made McMegan angry.
Keith G
Sen. Blanche Lincoln comes out against the reconciliation fix.
Lolis
This bill will make a huge difference in the lives of young people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. I know because I am one of them.
4jkb4ia
@Keith G:
That is very special. There are 50 Democrats with safer seats.
Dreggas
@Brien Jackson:
female wingnut tears are even sweeter.
4jkb4ia
That is part of why Rabbi Susan Talve, unquestionably a real progressive, always supported this bill. Older adults are taken care of and younger adults slip through the cracks.
me
@Keith G: Wasn’t there a deal for Arkansas in the original bill?
celticdragonchick
Young adult cancer patients?
Obviously, they are morally decrepit or God would not have afflicted them thusly.
If we don’t feed them, maybe they won’t breed…
Honest to God, I wonder where they hell basic human decency has gone to in this country at times.
Oh, I forgot.
Real Americans don’t need help from anything that sounds suspiciously “librul” (or European!) like a ‘society’.
real Americans pull themselves up by their bootstraps and would never think of getting gub’mint help. Didn’t you know that churches and religious charities have all the money they need, anyway? Real Americans give lots of money and that should be enough to help the two or three morally decrepit people who were cursed by God with cancer at age 17. John Stossel told me something like that, I’m sure…
Mike E
Impeccable timing–my daughter just got fitted for a backbrace to alleviate a recently diagnosed spinal malformation (it works btw:-). This bill removes some “extra” weight, if you know what I mean.
celticdragonchick
@Keith G:
And why are we paying attention to her at this point??
geg6
Okay. I didn’t cry yesterday or last night or this morning.
This post? Now I have. Weeping all over my desk.
danimal
What a moving story, and I hope to see many more like it. Thanks to the BJ community for helping move this bill.
Slightly OT: While swimming in wingnut tears today, I keep reading that somehow this bill was passed using legislative chicanery. How do they justify this? From my vantage point, the process has been Schoolhouse Rock clean, though there was consideration of some strange maneuvers such as deem-and-pass.
Are there any actual legislative manipulations that were used to pass HCR that I’m not aware of, or are the wingers just covering their backsides because they are now on the wrong side of history? Refusing poison-pill amendments and the like are so commonplace that I can’t imagine that is their complaint.
Linda Featheringill
I am very cheered at the idea of young cancer patients being politically active. Bravo and Hooray!
Take it from an old lady – activism can ease lots of different pains. It is obviously good for you.
Keith G
@4jkb4ia:
I am sure that is part of her calculation. Yet I find it interesting that Arkansas is most definitely a state that would benefit from the results of the passed legislation. And it seems that Blanche, whatever her strengths, can not find a way to make that argument and be an inspirational progressive leader.
Violet
I’m sitting here crying. Thank you for this post. Thank you Tim F. and Moises 2317 and everyone here for your effort. You have helped so many.
Yes We Can!
Yes We Did!
low-tech cyclist
While I’m neither young nor a cancer patient, I would like to add my thanks to theirs. It was the organized effort of the folks on this website that kept me calling my legislators from the depressing weeks after the MA special election, right up until this past weekend.
While I can’t say any of my calls made a difference by themselves, our collective action clearly did, and I’m delighted to have been a part of that effort.
Yes, we did!
Svensker
@geg6:
You and me both, kid.
Zuzu's Petals
@JAHILL10:
Yes, and I hope all this gets out in front of the story right away. Over and over. Making this the story…and what the GOPers will have to run against.
Zuzu's Petals
@Mike E:
My baby granddaughter was treated for “virus induced asthma” this winter, making her a prime suspect if my son ever changed jobs and had to look for new insurance. I’m so glad they will not have to worry about that now.
It seems every family must have or know of a situation like this.
Redshift
@Svensker: Yeah, it got me all sniffly, too.
I greatly enjoyed George R.R. Martin’s take on our accomplishment and our opposition, too. In addition to his own personal experience, writers tend know a whole lot of people who’ve had to spend their lives dealing with the individual insurance market while having unreliable income at best. Plus, they can write about it really well.
Redshift
@danimal: They’re just covering their backsides and doubling down on their stupid decision to go with process arguments a couple of weeks ago.
There was no process used to pass this bill that is in any way questionable, and none even considered that have not been used in a much more egregious manner by Republicans in the recent past, often the same Republican that is spouting the talking point.
Their arguments all through this have been egregious, obvious lies, and their process arguments are no different.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
This is definitely a lesson I think – hope – progressives have learned now: You cannot vote and magically everything will work out. Even in good times, when the Republicans are willing to be a responsible opposition party, it’s still going to take a lot of effort from everyone to get something passed.
Fitzwili
I want really to thank Moses 2317. – I used his call list- it was so much help. I think I have mentioned this elsewhere on the site that I am a cancer survivor; I had cancer when I was a small child. Even though I have insurance, for my whole life I have been afraid that if something ever happened to me, that the insurance company would find some reason to deny me because of preexisting conditions.
Today I woke up and I felt like a burden had been lifted from me- and if I feel that way( someone who isn’t currently seriously sick, has insurance,has job) imagine how people who were truly vulnerable feel today.
Joel
A reminder that we’re fighting for something greater than mere partisan victory.
Thanks to Moses2317 and Tim F. (again).
CaseyL
What amazing people and, yes, those are stories that need to be retold.
Now that the bill has passed, and will shortly become law, I hope the benefits that do start immediately (end of recission, end of denial for pre-existing conditions) impact enough people dramatically enough to shift the ongoing debate – not just about HCR (which will need to be tweaked for quite a while yet) but about progressive governance itself. Yes, we can accomplish great things; and yes, those are great things we should be addressing politically.
ericvsthem
Thanks for posting this.. like geg6, I’ve been fighting back the tears over the past day, but this story was more than I could take.
I’m one of the lucky 30-somethings with good health care insurance through my employer. Had my first physical exam in over 10 years this past summer (my first child was about to be born, so I thought it might be a good idea to at least have some bloodwork done). The doc found a lump in my throat, one thing led to another, and in December I was undergoing surgery to remove a cancerous thyroid. Today I’m fully cured and feeling good. As far as cancer goes, it wasn’t a huge deal.
But.. what if I didn’t have decent health care insurance? I probably wouldn’t have gotten a physical in the first place, in which case the cancer wouldn’t have been caught until it spread to the bones or lungs, or I started to have serious hypothyroid symptoms. Or maybe I’d have paid for the physical out of pocket, but since that type of cancer wasn’t immediately life threatening, I would not have been able to walk into an ER for treatment. The total cost of the surgeries, tests, treatments, and visits with various specialists easily cost +$80,000. I’d have been in debt for a very long time, or I would have sold my house..
This bill is going to make a huge difference in the lives of millions of Americans. It’s criminal that this situation has been allowed to go on as long as it has. And the firebaggers that worked to kill the bill should be exiled from Democratic circles.
Lurker
@CaseyL:
Financial columnist Jane Bryant Quinn has a list of HCR benefits that start in 2010:
http://janebryantquinn.com/2010/03/health-reform-that-helps-you-out-this-year/
The end of rescission starts this year. A ban against preexisting condition discrimination for children also starts this year.
The ban against preexisting condition discrimination for adults (and the mandate that will pay for it) will not start until the health insurance exchanges come online in 2014. Until 2014, though, all Americans will have access to a temporary high-risk pool that starts this year.
I am grateful that HCR passed last night.
Kairol Rosenthal
Thank you all so much for your comments and the Monday afternoon cry fest.
When I was 27, I learned that I had 19 malignant tumors in my neck and no insurance. (My employer had forgotten to submit my COBRA paperwork.) During the first month of cancer, I went to hell and back manipulating the government into reinstating my coverage. I’ve written and spoken extensively about how to cope with being young, sick and uninsured, including on an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.
After treatment, I bought a tape recorder and got a grant to travel the U.S. recording conversations with young adult cancer patients for a book which I wrote on the subject. Managing the heartache of health insurance was an issue patients brought up with me over and over again.
Young adults are the largest group of uninsured in the United States. As a result, our cancers are often diagnosed at later more advanced stages. We also carry the greatest amount of medical debt in the country.
I called the first chapter of my book Ramenomics because a patient said to me “I could eat nothing but Ramen Noodles for every meal for the next decade and I still would not be able to afford insurance that would allow me to get follow-up cancer scans.” I had one young woman ask me with tears running down her face “Am I going to die because nobody in this country cares that I am young, have cancer, and cannot afford health insurance?”
I’ve lived on the front line of the healthcare debacle for a decade. I’m now 37 and I’ve never been cancer free. Words cannot express my gratitude to anyone who has played a part in urging the Democrats to vote for reform.
Best,
Kairol Rosenthal
WolvesValley
@Kairol Rosenthal:
Now I’m REALLY crying.
aimai
Kairol,
What a story! thank you so much for the work you have done with other young people. The time you took interviewing them and listening to their stories is a gift you have given them as well as a gift to us. I am ashamed to say that I never thought about the young and uninsured who fall into the “doughnut hole” of coverage between the end of childhood and the beginning of good employment coverage. OF course, I lived through it too but I never got sick–or never too sick–and so I didn’t notice it. I kind of ended up aging into good health care coverage through my spouse. Its only now that I’m a parent that I’ve becomehyper aware of the problem of uninsured people and uninsured young people. Thank you for all the work you’ve done.
aimai
SiubhanDuinne
Please PLEASE PLEASE send this to the White House, Speaker Pelosi, Vicki Kennedy, cancer support groups, and whatever news media you can think of.
ETA: I typed this before I read the entire thread. I hope you will also include this in the next edition of your book.
celticdragonchick
@Kairol Rosenthal:
God bless you, hon.
asiangrrlMN
Man, I’m in tears again. This makes it really hit home just how important this bill was. And, the stories in this thread has done so as well. I know it would be a huge task, but if someone could go through the countless healthcare reform threads and cull all the stories about insurance (bad and good), that could make a really powerful book.