I've spent the last several months in and out of the ER, doom scrolling through the world's headlines in my news feed while waiting for the intake nurse to call my wife's name. From my little screen in that ICU waiting room, I've watched as Biden sent another $400 million in military aid on top of the $110 billion already handed to Ukraine for a proxy war with Russia.
Back here at home, our uniparty government wages war against poor kids, kicking millions of them off of federal healthcare and school meal programs. Meanwhile, two thirds of us don't have $400 in the bank to cover an emergency.
The war machine is flush with cash, while Americans are strapped for cash.
My wife has heart trouble. She wakes up in the middle of the night with chest pains. Her heart feels heavy and slow. She loses circulation in her hands, then her arms. They turn white from the lack of blood flow, and she starts hyperventilating to breathe oxygen back into her numbing limbs. Then we're back in the truck and off to the ER again.
I don't know if she'll get better, but I hope she will. Hope is the only currency the richest nation on the planet affords a majority of Americans, whose lives are wracked with chronic health problems and chronic money problems.
The ER is always crowded with armfuls of babies and side-glancing kids, encircled by exhausted parents wearing Dickies and Cintas work shirts with their names stitched above the right breast pocket: CJ, Graciella, Alex, Ayda.
The lot of us live in South Phoenix, a working poor Democratic stronghold. Vote blue no matter who politics have brought us light rail projects that shutter generations-old mom and pop businesses. Newly built tracts of luxury rental subdivisions steamroll over rezoned minority-majority trailer park neighborhoods. Democrats know where their future voting block lies: the college grad managerial class.
None of us in that ER is part of the Democrats' future. And Democrats are content.
After last December's bipartisan passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act and the end of Covid era healthcare protections, upwards of 14 million Americans are set to be purged from Medicaid roles starting April 1st. Where will they go for their healthcare needs?
They'll be with me and my wife in the ER.
Cancer, heart disease, and diabetes are all poverty-induced. And like poverty, healthcare worries are rooted in policy. Track scars from diabetes and track scars from fentanyl share the same corporate and legislative lineage. Health outcomes in America are determined by money and birthright. If you're born poor, you'll stay poor, and you'll get sick, and ultimately you'll die young.
The richest among us live 10 to 15 years longer than the poorest, and our life expectancies are dropping year over year. Even in Putin's Russia, expectant mothers have a lower maternal death rate than American moms. Is the enemy overseas or here at home?
During the 2020 presidential campaign, the nation was in the throes of the COVID healthcare crisis. Biden ran on a promise of "adding a public option to Obamacare as the best way to lower costs and cover everyone." Three years into his presidency, he has neither proposed nor fought for healthcare legislation that included a public option.
Biden lied to a suffering America to get elected. He won, and we lost.
When people get sick or die here in South Phoenix, no one turns to family or friends to help cover medical and funeral bills. Family and friends are all broke. Rather than starting a GoFundMe, where one third of all pleas are for medical debt, people gather at the major intersections to ask for donations with empty peanut cans and cut open milk jugs, carrying pictures of their dead or dying relatives.
Several weekends back, a family set up an impromptu car wash off Central Ave behind a half-empty strip mall to collect donations for their little boy's cancer treatments. I didn't ask them to wash my truck. I took the emergency twenty out of my wallet and stuffed it into the donation jug.
"Tell his momma I'm prayin' for him," I told the older woman holding up the little boy's picture.
"Thank you baby. Lord's gonna hear your name today."
The last 22 years of soaring poverty rates have been juxtaposed with forever war policies that added trillions to the national credit card. Whether it's in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, or a rocket vs. balloon pissing contest with China, it is an understatement to say that our government prioritizes warfare over the welfare of our people. Neither party acts in the interest of fiscal conservatism, and neither party believes in social progress.
Like every other career politician and entitled government employee, Joe Biden has spent the last 50-plus years of his public service lapping up excellent low cost taxpayer funded healthcare. Why don't we deserve the same? We're paying for our politicians' healthcare, and they're denying us ours.
All we're asking is what we're already paying for.
Cyrus Tharpe is a hazmat tanker truck driver. He is writing a memoir.
The views in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
