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Chris Hedges: The Actor and the Minister
from truthdig:
The Actor and the Minister
Posted on Jul 20, 2014
By Chris Hedges
BOSTONOn June 30 I was at the First Church in Jamaica Plain, Unitarian Universalist, which had turned its hall over to Michael Milligan, traveling the country performing his one-man play about a husband and wife trapped in our dysfunctional health care system. I arrived early at the stone church, whose present structure was erected in 1853, to help set up the chairs and clear the stage. The minister, the Rev. Terry Burke, who was a classmate of mine at Harvard Divinity School, officially retired that day after 31 years as a minister at the church. Burke, a non-smoker, has been diagnosed with lung cancer, and his doctors have told him he has six to 12 months to live. He applied for Social Security disability and was denied. He consulted a lawyer. He well might spend his last months struggling to get the disability system to pay for the chemotherapy that sustains his life.
Michael Milligan confronted the callousness of our health care system when he cared for a friend with a serious illness. His play Mercy Killers, which he has performed nearly 200 times, chronicles the struggle with insurance companies, drug companies and hospitals that profit from medical distress and then discard terminally ill people when they no longer can pay. The hourlong drama, set in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, occurs in a police station where Joe, an auto mechanic originally from West Virginia, speaks to an unseen investigator. [To see samples from the play, click here.]
Mercy Killers opens with Woody Guthries This Land Is Your Land playing. The song soon morphs into the sound of sirens. Joe explains how he attempted to care for his terminally ill wife, Jane, amid crushing psychological and financial pressures that put him half a million dollars in debt. His neighbors, he tells the police interrogator, held a bake sale to help out and raised $163.
Joe, who buys into the credo of the tea party and quotes Rush Limbaugh, is forced to set his ideology of individualism and self-reliance against a health care systemas well as a banking system that sold him a mortgage with an interest rate that rosedesigned to feed corporate profit rather than care for the ill or protect the consumer. Milligans high-octane performance is raw with grief, rage and incomprehension. The stark seta chair, a bright light and a tablehighlights Joes loneliness, inadequacy and abandonment. And by the end of the play, a for-profit health care system that is responsible for more than 60 percent of all U.S. bankruptcies is no longer just a matter of statistics. Its reality is felt like the blast of a furnace. ....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_actor_and_the_minister_20140720
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Chris Hedges: The Actor and the Minister (Original Post)
marmar
Jul 2014
OP
This must be from some other country. Per DU, ACA is the greatest legislation since
Doctor_J
Jul 2014
#1
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)1. This must be from some other country. Per DU, ACA is the greatest legislation since
everything! It's the bestest ever, just like the president is the bestest ever! And don't you worry about the hundreds of billions in profits that aren't going to healthcare! it's the price of freedom! And if you don't like Allied Health's profits, you should go home to east germany!
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)2. Comments are outstanding
From a rural nurse:
Much of my job consists of attempting to get authorization from insurance companies who do all they can to prevent payment for even a front wheel walker - much less anything more costly. I am bombarded with a complicated ritual of finding fax numbers of insurance company reps who are rewarded for not being found - and denials from those I do locate.
The hospital as middle-man. "Why is Mr. Jones still here? Insurance pays for 3.2 days on his type of pneumonia. Lets get him out of here."
The hospital as middle-man. "Why is Mr. Jones still here? Insurance pays for 3.2 days on his type of pneumonia. Lets get him out of here."
thanks to Hedges for sticking to his principles
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)3. people are avoiding this thread like the plague
Refuse to confront that our system is a complete disaster. Kick.