Janice walked in carrying a huge new juicer -- a good one. One that probably cost a couple of hundred dollars that I'm pretty sure she had a hard time coming up with. She found the money somehow, though, because her sister Cheryl needs to stay healthy. "Nobody's going to f-ing die because we're poor!"
Cheryl's fighting cancer and good food helps. And that juicer has helped a lot. Between fresh juices every day, lots of supplements, vitamins and biweekly doses of chemo, the tumors are shrinking. She's got hope and so do we.
It makes sense -- clean, vitamin-packed fruits and vegetables are good for all of us, and they're especially good when you need to clear your system of poison. Cancer is poison.
So is poverty. It kills just as surely as cancer, if more insidiously.
So, here's the story. You could say that Cheryl and I grew up together. We lived next door to each other in an absolutely beautiful place in Hawai'i (we had Section 8, which helped us pay the rent). I'd moved there with a 3-year-old and a brand-new baby to try to find a better life after bouncing from one crappy job to another in California. What I found in our new life in Hawai'i was more poverty -- and an amazing best friend. Cheryl's mother was native Hawaiian and her father was white. She was raised Hawaiian. For those of you who have lived in Hawai'i, you know the significance of this. And you might know how hard it is for nonlocals -- haoles -- to fit in and make friends. I had a really, really hard time -- I was poor and isolated and desperately lonely. Cheryl took me under her wing and quite literally saved my life.
We helped each other with our kids. We found joy in our young womanhood. We shared laughter and tears during our pregnancies, fights with our husbands, and struggles to put food on the table. We loved each other then and we love each other now.
Cheryl is a wonderful person who has raised wonderful kids. She's had amazing experiences in life. She has also had some really horrible experiences -- all of which she has risen above. She is one of the wisest people I know. Today, she's battling cancer with grace, humor and courage. And along with millions of other people in America she's struggling financially. Here are some facts:
• 15.1 percent of the population in the U.S. in 2010 was below the poverty line.
• Infant mortality rate (2012 estimates): 5.98 deaths per 1,000 live births, which ranks the U.S. 48th in a list from best (Monaco and Japan) to worst (Afghanistan).
• In 2004, the U.S. had the third-highest poverty rate in 24 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. By 2011, the U.S. had the fourth-highest inequality level in 34 OECD countries, following Chile, Mexico, and Turkey.
• U.S. income distribution is worse than nearly all of the 47 highly developed countries and economic regions identified by the United Nations.
• Poverty can be linked to poor health, including cancer, in a variety of ways, including how difficult it is to maintain a healthy diet with too-little income.
Is poverty a carcinogen, as Samuel Broder, director of the National Cancer Institute in 1989, suggested? It's much debated, but we know for sure that there's a correlation between socioeconomic status (SES) and access to education, health care and lifestyle choices that help -- or harm -- health. And in the U.S., SES is linked to race. According to a 2011 report by the American Cancer Society, "In 2007, about 164,000 men and women aged 25-64 years died of cancer in the US. More than 60,000 (37%) of these deaths could have been avoided if all segments of the population had the same cancer death rates as the most educated whites."
So, back to Cheryl's story. She is a beautiful woman. She's lean and toned from a lifetime of running and swimming. She beat the poverty odds and has stayed healthy much of the time. But that doesn't mean it's easy to get healthy now. She needs good food, expensive vitamins and supplements -- things that Medicaid won't pay for but that will help her stay on top of the disease. And then there's gas money for the many long trips from her town to the city for chemo. Being sick is expensive. Her family will do anything they possibly can to help her beat the thing. But it's almost impossible to find the money.
People do die because they're poor in the U.S. What the hell is wrong with us as a people that we turn a blind eye to this?
The U.S. falls behind other developed nations on so many measures of well-being. Our children are more obese. Adults, too. We're just average when it comes at teaching math and sciences and, in general, at educating our children. And that's not our teachers' faults. Drug and alcohol abuses are high here in America. Cruelty and neglect of children continues to be a huge problem, and every day three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends.
Of course, rich and middle-class people suffer from cancer and drug abuse, alcoholism, child and spouse abuse. All of these issues are complicated. So is poverty. But, when it comes right down to it, there is absolutely no reason for the kind of poverty we see in the U.S., other than the choices we have made as a nation and the cultural beliefs we hold that have at the center tolerance for inequity and the notion that poverty is a result of indolence. People aren't poor because they're lazy. It is much, much harder to be poor than it is to be financially comfortable. I know this from my own personal experience.
What's really hard is breaking free of poverty. It's almost like our entire system is geared toward keeping people exactly where they are -- fighting to get out becomes your problem. I spent many years fighting to get out of poverty. And yes, I and millions of other people benefit from programs like food stamps, welfare, housing assistance and government-funded education. Without these programs I wouldn't be where I am today. But if they were really working systemically, we simply wouldn't have so many people toiling under the yoke of poverty.
It shouldn't be this way. But changing how we view and deal with poverty will require that we all do something: help a friend in need, loan money for someone's college tuition, coach and mentor young people. Buy a juicer. And although we can't vote our way out of this problem, it's pretty clear where the lines are drawn in the debate. I will most certainly be voting for President Obama and others who will work to halt our slide into spiritual, as well as real, impoverishment as a nation.
This isn't some abstract conversation about poverty. My friend Cheryl, like millions of Americans, can't afford to buy basic things that will help her to get and stay healthy. And in a country as rich as ours, no one should f-ing die because they're poor.
Follow Annie McKee on Twitter: www.twitter.com/anniemckee
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if keeping people healthy was profitable the mic would be churning out orange groves and juicers left and right, sadly death is the only thing profitable to those who hold the power.
I see it, from an economic standpoint, as the government being the heart of a body, pumping blood to all the cells that do the work - muscles, nerves, bones, internal organs - nourishing those cells. The cells transport the brain, feed the brain, do the work of the brain, and give the brain purpose. Without those cells doing all those things, the brain and body would die.
The poor and lower classes are the cells. They make up the vast majority of the population, and are the foundation of our economy. Without them pumping the money they get back into the economy, the rest would not be able to survive.
The poor and lower classes are the REAL job creators.
We NEED for them to have money to spend. Not as much as they need it, but for a thriving economy, we need them to spend.
If this country is to succeed in the future, an attitude of social caring must prevail. The countries which have adopted that structure are those in which the inhabitants are the happiest, and healthiest.
If Progressives gain one of the houses of Congress and the Presidency, this positive type of agenda is inevitable, and sorely needed. Once in place there will be no going back...No one will WANT to go back to Social Darwinism after experiencing the peace of mind and security social caring brings to a nation.
That is why the right is so desperate to succeed in November. This is their last chance to retain their status as a viable way of life - they are in a struggle to keep an agenda alive which benefits them, and them only. They don't care about the rest of us, and would prefer to see us subjugated.
That is why the vote you cast in November may very well be the most important one you cast in your lifetime...Get out there and do it.
Anyone that doesn't know about the long con, or wants to understand it better can read this article that explains it to you, in the words of the people that set up the con:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0
I hate to break the news to you Annie but..............
We need to take it back from the wealthy right wingers who only want welfare for themselves.
What's relative in the right-winger's philosophy is that they believe 1% of Americans should enjoy more wealth than 90% of all other Americans combined. That CEOs should make 350 to 400 times the amount an ordinary American worker makes - and that here in America, unlike every other advanced industrial "civilized" nation on the planet - if you get sick - there's going to be some CEO and corporation who will make sure you go bankrupt just so you can go see a doctor.
Oh no - let's all live like Africans in Somalia - and be happy. Who cares if this is America - where we all once were proud of being a society that gave everyone equal opportunity and an affordable education?
It's all relative Mr. trumpsbull here wants you to believe - just as long as the Wallstreet robber barons can continue making their billions on the backs of the rest of working Americans.
I'm thinking that reading about the long con the Republicans have been running for decades now may help you understand what has been going on, and just how bad they are. Find it here, with the words of the people that set it up.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0
Over dinner the other night with six women we traded stories. One insured, pregnant woman was in a similar situation as me. One recovering from breast cancer depleted her life savings to cover healing options that weren't covered by insurance. One uninsured woman who has chronic health issues is putting her house on the market so that she and her husband and two kids can move to Canada (dual citizenship) if her condition worsens.
My point is that health care is a problem for those in poverty, and for those of us who are more middle income. It seems to not touch the ultra-rich, and they're the ones making the decisions for the rest of us.
Really - it all boils down to the fact that Washington and our politicans there really no longer represent the interests of ordinary Americans. Big Money and the interests of Wallstreet and corporate America now take precedence over the very health of our country. Our politicians - so beholden to the wealthy and Big Business, no longer are able to do their jobs - to act on behalf of We the People in what is suppose to be an American democracy.
Really? Didn't the ex Ms Edwards live in a 10k sq ft house and die of cancer? Maybe she couldn't afford vitamins. Or maybe she could afford them and chose them over western medicine. Maybe acupuncture would have cured her. Or yoga. Or yodeling. Do you really expect taxpayers to cover yodeling lessons whose affects are based upon junk science? Really?
The same thing with the above article. If you have a vitamin or mineral deficiency, if prescrbed by a MD Medicade will cover it. If you don't have a deficiency, expensive vitamins only provide you expensive urine. Another example of bad decision making. Kinda like not being able to hold a job in CA, but moving to HI where the COL is 2X. Great idea? Maybe, if HI gives the poor more free stuff than CA. That's hard to imagine.
For example, the life expectancy for the more well off has been steadily climbing, while for the poor it has held steady or gone down.