"Some of the people on Medicare and Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income are people with disabilities. Your parents, your cousins, your grandnephews, your neighbors — some of them are people with disabilities. They have autism or Alzheimer’s or arthritis or achondroplasia or carpal tunnel syndrome or Crohn’s disease or Parkinson’s or Huntington’s or cerebral palsy or MS or Down syndrome or traumatic brain injury; they are deaf or blind or paraplegic or schizophrenic. Some of them don’t have a diagnosis at all, or if they do, it is “pervasive developmental delay,” which means “we have no idea what’s going on.” Some of them came into the world that way; some inherited a genetic anomaly; some caught a virus; some, like the Frosts, simply happened to be in a car that hit a patch of black ice one winter night. And you might be one of them yourself — if not now, maybe later. One never knows."
Oh, never, not me, you say. Until it happens to you.
A bit more: "Sure, people know (or know that they have to pretend not to know) the risks of smoking, or drinking heavily, or eating bacon double cheeseburgers, or riding their motorcycle without a helmet. But most disabilities don’t work that way. They’re not the result of calculations and risk management. Only the most sociopathically callous among us would say, “Jack totally deserved that brain injury from falling off that ladder … he knew the risks when he went up to clean the gutters.” And to this day, no one has ever said to me, “you knew what you were getting into when you had Jamie … you pay for him.”
The bold is mine. It's the heart of the matter that the public skitters past every day.
Medicare for all. 'Cause you or someone you love is gonna need it. I guaran-damn-tee.
No comments:
Post a Comment