Health Insurance Crisis Takes More Lives

"This is Corie Duckett. Three years ago, she lost her TennCare, and she had a fatal case of epilepsy. Her medication cost about six hundred a month, and she couldn't hold down a realy job because of her illness. Her only option was to become a stipper, because there is no schedule. If she was sick, then she could just not go to work that day. She was too naive to be in that underworld, and she ended up getting murdered by one of the dancers. I was her protector, and I wasn't there to save her when she needed me the most. All I wanted to do was save her and give her a chance at a normal life.

Now, I'm sick. I have infection embedded in my tonsils, and they need to come out. I have strep every other week. Working makes me sicker. I have to come up with that money on my own, but if I work, I'm going to end up killing myself. The infection is spreading throughout my entire body.

So, now, I'm going to have to work at the strip club, b/c there is no schedule and its the only job I will be able to hold down right now. I have no health insurance, even though I've had a great web design job for the last nine months. I feel like this process is happening all over again, and I hope that I don't end up like Corie.

In America, if you are poor like me and Corie, you have to try to survive, and then the world turns its back on you because you are a stripper. How is not my basic human right to get the surgery that could save my life? How is it not Cories basic human right to get the medication she needed to stay alive? If we were rich, she would still be alive, and I would have had my surgery by now.

Private insurance comanies won't take me because I'm a health risk. I'm medically uninsurable. How is it that the person who deserves it the most doesn't get the insurance that could save their life? What kind of country is this, that it turns its back on the poor. The constitution says we all have the basic human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How do I have the right to life, if no one cares enough to save it? What is wrong with this picture?"

~~ A "Someone Who Cares" reader