Sunday, April 10, 2011

My biggest fear

I am really excited to move back to Baltimore. There are three things I'll really really miss in Toronto:
1. My friends (but that doesn't mean I live in a community and that's a biggie for me)
2. My yoga studio. I mean that with everything in me. I'm really gonna miss that place.
3. My health insurance. THIS IS HUGE.

1. My friends. I've made some wonderful friends here. But the thing about them is is that they're all kind of separate. My relationships with them are sort of singular. One of the things that I like about Baltimore is the community thing I got going on. I used to hate that I knew everyone. It felt suffocating. But now. Now I'm so happy to go to the coffee shop and run into people and chat. And this doesn't just mean I go to M***c here in Toronto and listen to a bunch of university students (grad or otherwise) talk about school. I'm talking about having chats with all kinds of people, old, young, business folks, crust punks, hippies, dippies, grad students, musicians, whoever, that you just run into on any given day. It's nice. I know that there are communities here in Toronto. It's obvious in Kensington Market that there is that kind of community. But, I just don't have access to it. So I never cultivated it here. I cultivated it in San Francisco. That's the benefit of doing food service work. But here, not so much.

2. Yoga. Oy. My yoga studio is so unique that I couldn't have learned nearly as much as I have anywhere else. It got me through a somewhat debilitating injury and helped me learn how to practice so that I can practice for a long time. It's wonderful and I'm going to miss it.

3. Here's the biggie. I'm terrified of not having health care. Having a shitty, somewhat affordable health insurance package is not the same as having guaranteed health care. Those are two entirely different things. I mean, we've all heard the horror stories about people getting rejected and bankrupted and left to die. I just cannot understand a system that ties a fundamental right - the right to health care - to employment. All you read and hear about is that employers can't afford to insure their employees, especially small employers, or that people are chronically unemployed or underemployed. In a system where full-time, steady employment with good health care benefits is more fiction than fact, I cannot for the life of me understand why people think that basic access to care is somehow "socialist," i.e., evil.* I've chosen a field where there is no guarantee that I'll get a job. In fact, I've chosen several fields where health insurance has not been attached to my employment. Some would say, "choose better jobs." But, even if I was going to be a waitress or a yoga teacher for the rest of my life, does that not guarantee me access to health care. It really boils my blood and terrifies me at the same time.

People here in Canada cannot fathom such a system. While the "perks" of health care are tied to employment contracts, nobody is left to die of or be bankrupted by cancer or a car accident or a fall down the stairs. It's fucking absurd and I'm really worried that when (not if) I get cancer (hey, we live in a toxic, chemical, radiation-filled world), bye bye my house, bye bye my savings or any cushion I have to maybe save for retirement. And that mentality will keep me a fucking wage slave for the rest of my life. Fuck this system.

* I think socialism is kind of awesome, by the way.

2 comments:

  1. http://wasconstantinople.blogspot.com/2011/04/health-care.html
    Hether, you rock.

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  2. Thanks Sarah. More expats need to tell their stories.

    It's really funny. My father is an "unemployed" (i.e., working on my house for peanuts) carpenter who does not have health insurance. Yet, he listens to those right wing talk shows and is convinced that once the government provides health care, then that proves that the country is really in the shitter. When Chris took that spill down the stairs and we (um, he) wound up paying nearly $8k in medical bills, it really hit home how fucked we are. And when my dad inadvertently said one day, "The fucking democrats are trying to put the insurance companies out of business!" I nearly had an aneurism (thank goodness I didn't because I couldn't have afforded to).

    This system is unfathomable to most people. This "American exceptionalism" that guides this discourse ("Socialized health care will ruin what is great about America") makes no sense if held up to even the tiniest bit of scrutiny. But Logic does not matter. Ideology does. It leaves me wondering how the fuck to get around this ridiculous set up.

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