I Cogitate
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An unnecessary death in the land of plenty
I didn't know Michael Cook but there are too many people suffering amidst the same unfortunate circumstances that contributed to his death. He died in Silicon Valley, the land of plenty, in the United States of America, the ONLY western industrialized country failing to offer national health coverage.
This is obscene, a national shame, but life as we know it goes on. Sadly, not for Michael Cook and so many others who receive no press.
I don't wish to make this partisan but George Bush's health care accounts should be DOA for failing to address the elephant in the national living room, lack of coverage due to cost. Realistically, it will take some of the titans of industry, the most powerful within the private sector, to secure any revolution. This country already spends far too much of its gross national product on healthcare. This cannot help corporate competitiveness. Unburdened from the direct cost of health care insurance, U.S. corporations will be able to better compete with opponents abroad who aren't burdened with the cost of employee coverage.
It's way past time to push back. In 2008, if a presidential candidate fails to offer a plan for national health coverage--refuse to support her or him. Political pressure is the only way to make this happen.
Hutchison: Tragedy illustrates why health care should be universalTo read the rest of the article. go here.
By Sue Hutchison
San Jose Mercury News
August 14, 2006
This is the kind of guy Michael Cook was: When he lay dying last month of a very rare cancer, dozens of people from all over the country flew in so they could wait patiently outside his hospital room to say goodbye. Even some of the medical staff, who must steel themselves against getting too emotionally attached to patients, could not help crying over the bitter unfairness of what had happened to him and how gracefully he accepted it.
I know this because I happened to be at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View the day before Cook died on July 27 when he was only 42. I was speaking with a doctor and a nurse there about the pressing need for universal health insurance, and both blinked back tears when they told me about him. Deaf since birth, he had worked hard all his life to support his wife and two children only to be laid off from his job in the mailroom at the NASA/Ames Research Center in Mountain View mere months before he was diagnosed with cancer.
Cook had not wanted to get a CT scan when he first went to a clinic complaining of abdominal pain because he was certain he couldn't afford it. His family had chipped in to get him temporary health insurance, but it cost $650 a month and it had expired by the time his pain had become too acute to ignore any longer.
This month when I spoke to Dr. Saul Eisenstat, the surgeon who operated on Cook at El Camino, he was not one of those in tears. He was just plain furious.
``The poor guy was completely failed by the system. It makes me sick,'' Eisenstat told me. ``He worked and paid into it all his life and what did he get?'' The doctor said that Cook's life might not have been saved even if he had had insurance when he was diagnosed. But there is no doubt that he delayed getting treatment far too long because he was worried that he couldn't afford it.
``Michael worked at NASA for 14 years before he was laid off because of funding cuts,'' his mother, Mary Cook, told me. Before that he had been a day laborer. ``It's so difficult to get a job when you're deaf,'' Mary said. ``But he always worked.''
Here's a link to an article about the need for corporate involvement in pushing for a change. A change before the Michael Cook you know suffers and dies.
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