We will never be loud enough: HRC 27/100
24 August, 2016 | Index
Dear Hillary Clinton,
Gerard Mclean here, from Englewood, Ohio, just north of Dayton. There were 100 days from your nomination to election, so I’m writing you 100 letters. This is the twenty-seventh letter. The others can be found in your USPS mailbox or online at 100HRC.com
I don’t have any allergies for which I would need an EpiPen. I cannot imagine what it is like living under the fear that the next random thing you eat will cause your airways to constrict so hard and fast that you will die without having ready and immediate access to a drug, a drug that should be as readily available to you as air.
When I saw random stories pop up in my social media feeds, I didn’t pay much attention to them. After all, how much of an increase could drug companies really get away with on such a common drug as an EpiPen? Certainly the volume of people who needed the drug was a powerful force against a high price hike, I thought.
It turns out, they are not. We will never be large enough in numbers to influence corporations with our dollars or our voices. They apparently, simply do not care if their actions kill some of us, as long as it is the unimportant or poor people. Moreover, when I found out that Mylan’s CEO Heather Bresch is Sen. Joe Manchin’s daughter, I knew nothing would change.
This is exactly why we can no longer trust private, for-profit health insurance corporations with our collective health care. They are testing our limits in these small ways and finding there is a lot they can — and feel they are entitled to — get away with. It will get worse.
We need SinglePayer, MedicareForAll, UniversalCare. Not later, not tomorrow; NOW.
Regards,
Gerard McLean
cc: Sen. Sherrod Brown, Heather Bresch, Sen. Joe Manchin
PS I wrote the title for this letter while listening to Fight Song, reading Katie Kilkenny’s story in Pacific Standard. I realize my 100 letters are a small boat on a very large ocean. Are you hearing me? Am I loud enough?
