As you may or may not have heard, President Trump’s Republican Congress has this brilliant and innovative philosophy on healthcare: cuts, cuts, cuts. Privatizing healthcare (that is, denying the right to be treated by a doctor when sick and instead conceptualizing health care as something to be traded, a commodity) in the United States, no matter what the news tells you, is not exclusively a conservative agenda nor anything new. The political gap between Democrats and Republicans shrinks when we speak of privatization because the Democrats have yet to demonstrate that they are politically motivated to oppose the Republicans whenever we approach issues based on costs. Republicans think that the rich shouldn’t invest in the public sphere — like at all. Democrats think that some things the rich should pay for, but other things are okay for the public to be robbed of their hard earned tax money for, like charter schools or the rapidly inflating defense budget.

I have epilepsy, asthma and I also suffer from major depressive disorder. Without getting into the specifics of how privileged I am to be born into a middle-class family where I won’t be devastated by the new #Trumpcare law if it passes the House and Senate, I still have to give serious thought and anger in response to the state of healthcare in the United States. Obamacare was problematic for a lot of reasons and there were millions left uninsured because they couldn’t necessarily find affordable coverage on the government exchange, but nonetheless, it had material progress for the marginalized. The Republicans, ever committed to their ideas of creating a world where the Market decides who lives and who dies for the benefit of the already very wealthy, saw this as a threat (which is laughable since Obamacare hardly regulated the actions of scum like Martin Shrkeli who would make my epilepsy meds $5000 a pill if he could). As someone who lives with several disorders and chronic illnesses, I am keenly aware of my less privileged and more marginalized disabled folks who will most certainly die without coverage.

👏 Let👏 women👏 drag👏 gasping👏 disabled👏 protestors👏 off👏 to👏 prison👏 so👏 we👏 can👏 cut👏 taxes👏 for👏 billionaires pic.twitter.com/11n3Tu9bVz
— Gore Vidal Sassoon (@JimmyJazz1968) June">https://twitter.com/JimmyJazz1968/status/878120134... 23, 2017

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This is the face of folks doing their damnedest to keep their coverage. This is who they (the Republicans, and by extension of neglect and inaction, the Democrats) are hurting.

The world we live in, a world governed by the forces of capitalism, White supremacy, imperialism, and so on, is the world that does not consider healthcare to be a human right. Folks with disabilities, the most impoverished among us, are considered disposable to the Republican Party and have few genuine advocates in the Democratic Party. Healthcare is not an abstract debate about how we can save insurance companies money. They can live with one less yacht. People who need insurance, in my view, are not “customers." We are patients in need of treatment. Poverty is a created condition — it is not natural and those in power are committed to what we identify as “class war." Poverty and disability are marginalized to keep up the status quo. Real #Resistance is not milquetoast criticism from media pundits. Declare healthcare as your right, as the right of all peoples.