In case Copper Courier doesn't want this...

[chicating]

Why Medicaid Cuts Make Me Think Of Luigi Mangione


Not because Mr. Mangione was on disability like me. By all accounts, he comes from a wealthy background that could’ve afforded him all of the alternative medicine he could take into his head(or aching back) to want. But reading that story over the summer still reminded me of how small our world got when I was working on our last appeal of an attempt to cut my personal care benefits in 2012.

That is most of what I did that year, most of what I thought about, even when people asked me about other things. Mentally, part of me was looking for some mundane personal detail—why don’t personal-care plans take more note of menstrual periods, for instance—they happen to half the planet…just not, shall we say, to the lucky half—to stuff in some manila or electronic folder, and hope that it pressed some heartstring someplace. In the end, I guess that time had sort of a happy ending. Friends wrote personal statements for me, the doctor that I’d only seen one other time came through with a strong and stirring statement, I had support from the local independent-living center, and we even got most of the money back. But it still was a small dark time, ten months spent e-mailing strangers and looking for technicalities…if my mobility issues had been compounded by the kinds of pain that it seems like Mangione suffered, I’m not sure that I could have helped myself.

Still, I’ve been in a wheelchair since birth so the appeal process put some strain on my double act with my mother, too, and, even though it seems dramatic to say so, we think of that as a lost year. I don’t want another one; I think that’s a mean thing to do when people are just trying to get through our lives, largely in situations not designed to meet our needs, since the United States is still designed for abled people.
It's hard not to do what I’ve been taught to do at times like this and bring up the ways I’m good at being Special: List some publications(yes, there are some) or show off a picture of me with the fam looking cute.
It's not the point, though. You shouldn’t have to deserve healthcare, housing, or to go to the toilet.And you really shouldn’t have to wonder if your own government treats you like they do because they think you can’t fight back.