Last Thursday local time, I was on a flight home from Asia in the middle seat with my 4-year-old daughter to my left and my 11-year-old son to my right. They were both deep asleep as it was technically past their bedtime and hours into a 12-hour flight back to SFO. My daughter was having an especially tough time.
She’s as stubborn as I am, and as you can imagine it is impossible to reason with a 4-year-old me. So after refusing to eat and refusing to nap and then refusing to stop watching Bluey, she collapsed into my arms exclaiming, “Mama, I’m so tired,” and passed out. And a few minutes later, we experienced a level of turbulence I have never in all my years traveling experienced. It must have been a vertical elevation drop as I could feel myself being lifted off my seat and I have never held on as tightly to my children as I did in those quickly passing moments. Thankfully, we all had our seat belts on. And for the remaining hours of that flight home through several more hours of turbulence, whether they will ever know it or not, I had one arm firmly around each child.
It was also around the same time that I was clutching onto my children for dear life when the CEO of UnitedHealthcare Brian Thompson was killed in New York City on his way to an investors meeting. While impossible to confirm the motive for what is widely believed to be a premeditated attack, seeing the words “depose,” “delay” and “deny” etched into shell casings left at the scene of the crime sends a pointed message. As well, knowing that United Healthcare has the highest insurance claim denial rate in the country at 32% and seeing the thousands and thousands of stories shared of seemingly inhumane claim denials, the internet universe has put one and one together to the point where even the entire online sleuthing community proactively decided to opt out of participating in identifying the suspect.
The often debilitating cost of health care in the United States has financially savaged families over the past 20 years, during what were many of privatized insurance companies’ most profitable years. Many of us personally know people who have been financially crippled from medical bills, and we have seen the emotional and physical burden it puts on people who have had to watch their life savings disintegrate while still feeling the crushing burden of medical bills they may not in their lifetimes pay off. It should never take an act of hate (even if potentially catalyzed by an act of love) to force change, but here we are, faced with the opportunity of turning a tragedy into an opportunity. Perhaps now that Taylor Swift has finally officially ended her 149-concert, 50-city, five-continent, 20-month Eras Tour, she can kick off a new era of health care reform?
Heading into this week, San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus has been formally invited to join Tuesday’s County Board of Supervisors regular meeting to provide sworn testimony tied to Judge Cordell’s 400-page report of findings supporting several allegations of misconduct. To date, Sheriff Corpus continues to refuse to step down from her post and describes the board’s actions as a “witch hunt.”
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Is it pride? Ideology? Love? A desire to get something else out of it? Some combination of all of the above? Until Corpus testifies under sworn oath, the people may never understand her true motives and perhaps will only have the opportunity to judge the impact of her decisions. Given no such item exists on the Dec. 10 regular meeting agenda, for now, the people will be left wondering.
It does not seem in our cards that these final weeks of 2024 will go by quietly, and 2025 is only destined to kick off with a grand splash. So to answer Tina Turner’s 1984 question, there are so many reasons why we make the choices we do every day — in all of these choices, what doesn’t love have to do with any of it? Love is fueling hugs, you clocking in on time, our community advocacy and donation drives. Love is fueling the rage and catalyzing action or even sometimes inaction. So, for love of friends and family, community, country and humanity …
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage (and love!) against the dying of the light.
Annie Tsai is chief operating officer at Interact (tryinteract.com), early stage investor and advisor with The House Fund (thehouse.fund), and a member of the San Mateo County Housing and Community Development Committee. Find Annie on Twitter @meannie.
Healthcare costs are high due to government regulations. i.e. the requirement that provides free healthcare for the homeless, illegal immigrants or anyone who walks into a hospital, requirements that my wife and me pay for prenatal care when neither one of us can get pregnant, transgender surgeries for prisoners, medicaid and medicare dictating to the hospitals how much they will pay for a procedure, insurance claims, and of course because incredible doctors and nurses need to be payed tremendous salaries because they are highly skilled. Let's not forget the cost to build new hospitals, & upgrade medical equipment.
The reality is only 4.6% of bankruptcies in America are due to medical costs and the median medical debt is only $2,326. In one payer systems, 8.2% of bankruptcies in the UK are due to medical debt, 5.3% in Canada. A family or an individual should not be filing for bankruptcy if their debt is $2,500. Which means they have other debt, most likely credit card debt so it's not medical debt that is the problem, it's overall debt and irresponsible decisions and spending.
Finally, people should be able to choose a health plan which allows them to choose what type of coverage is best for them if. i.e. prenatal care or no prenatal care, or transgender care or no transgender care etc...
With so many two income households it only seems fair for employers to split the cost. Could free up quite a bit of funding for government without needing to raise taxes.
While I have not read the report, nor do I care to, besides looking bad where are the DA charges? If the law was not broken then we should move on and let the voters decide in the next election. In addition, if Corpus is somehow exonerated are those being critical willing to resign based on their same principle?
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Healthcare costs are high due to government regulations. i.e. the requirement that provides free healthcare for the homeless, illegal immigrants or anyone who walks into a hospital, requirements that my wife and me pay for prenatal care when neither one of us can get pregnant, transgender surgeries for prisoners, medicaid and medicare dictating to the hospitals how much they will pay for a procedure, insurance claims, and of course because incredible doctors and nurses need to be payed tremendous salaries because they are highly skilled. Let's not forget the cost to build new hospitals, & upgrade medical equipment.
The reality is only 4.6% of bankruptcies in America are due to medical costs and the median medical debt is only $2,326. In one payer systems, 8.2% of bankruptcies in the UK are due to medical debt, 5.3% in Canada. A family or an individual should not be filing for bankruptcy if their debt is $2,500. Which means they have other debt, most likely credit card debt so it's not medical debt that is the problem, it's overall debt and irresponsible decisions and spending.
Finally, people should be able to choose a health plan which allows them to choose what type of coverage is best for them if. i.e. prenatal care or no prenatal care, or transgender care or no transgender care etc...
With so many two income households it only seems fair for employers to split the cost. Could free up quite a bit of funding for government without needing to raise taxes.
While I have not read the report, nor do I care to, besides looking bad where are the DA charges? If the law was not broken then we should move on and let the voters decide in the next election. In addition, if Corpus is somehow exonerated are those being critical willing to resign based on their same principle?
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.