Stories from a broken system
Everywhere I go, I hear people’s stories. A few people have asked me to tell their stories on Life o’ Mike. We want people to tell their own stories, but many feel intimidated.
Several people have asked me, as a writer, to tell their stories for them. So, here are stories of people who are caught in a broken system, waiting for treatment, waiting for disability to kick in, waiting to become eligible for Medicare and hoping for something better.
My friend Kay Zwan calls it the robbing of the American dream. How can you achieve when you worry every day whether you’ll be granted lifesaving treatment by your insurance company or whether the state will cut off the services you need to live independently?
People who are ill or who have disabilities are left to fight for whatever they can get. Many of them feel they have no voice and no control over their own lives.
It’s time to put faces on this mess.
So, I’ll start with Mike’s story, and add, page by pager, the stories of people who are suffering.
If you want a story told, please e-mail lifeomike@gmail.com with your contact information.
Help Life o' Mike
We need your help now more than ever. Your tax-deductible donation will help us get Patient Pals and Family Friends off the ground. Please consider a gift in honor or in memory of a loved one.
Patient Pals & Family Friends volunteer training
Our Feb. 27 training had to be postponed, but we have rescheduled. Join us 8 days, as we train our next group of volunteers for Patient Pals & Family Friends. The four-hour training will run 10 a.m.-2 p.m. and will include lunch. Patient Pals are people who have experience with an illness or disability. After training, they will be paired with someone who is newly diagnosed or disabled. Family Friends will be volunteers who are paired with family members of people who are ill or disabled, and will have been through the expeience of having a loved one with illness or disability. In Loving Memory
Life o' Mike has participated two memorial services to remember those who have died from our broken health care system, one in Asheville and one in Raleigh.
If you would like to organize more of these services, please contact lifeomike@gmail.com and we will help put it together.
The services include stories, prayers and information on how people of faith can make a difference.
About 45,000 people die each year because they don’t have health insurance, according to a recent study by Harvard Medical School and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That breaks down to one American every 12 minutes.
Those people can be honored in the service by a bell chime and a moment of silence every 12 minutes in the service.
For more information, call Leslie Boyd at 828-243-6712.
Contact your representatives
Ask them what they're doing to fix health care!
Post a comment