HOT: Wanting everyone to have access to affordable health care.
NOT: Romanticizing existing socialized health care systems in Europe and pretending they don't screw over disabled people constantly.
NOT: Romanticizing existing socialized health care systems in Europe and pretending they don't screw over disabled people constantly.
I want to be clear that no system in the world is *good* for people with my condition (#MECFS, with one of the lowest quality of life scores of any disease). But the US is the *least bad* place for people with my condition.
This is (tl;dr) b/c nobody wants to research us, so the treatments that actually help us are often experimental and generally not covered by Medicaid/Medicare or other gov't health care systems (like the NHS). However, they are *sometimes* covered by private insurance in the US.
The US is thus the most conducive environment to the kind of medical innovation and outside-the-box thinking that has saved the lives of multiple friends of mine who have #MECFS.
We need the modesty to admit we actually haven't figured this out yet, rather than what I see more often which is constant abled-splaining of my disabled friends who don’t think Medicare For All is actually going to improve their lives.
If I had my same medical conditions but lived in the UK or some other EU countries, I could be forced into harmful graded exercise programs, medically kidnapped by the government for noncompliance, and/or have to fundraise 100s of thousands of dollars for appropriate surgery.
The above isn’t a thought experiment. It’s happened to real people, some of whom I know personally. Whereas I know people who have gotten those same (100s of thousands of $$) surgeries (that are cash pay only if you live in the EU), covered by insurance in the US.
I've bookmarked this Tweet for a reason. *Millions* of people worldwide have #MECFS. The condition's constraints can make it very difficult for us to make our voices heard. Consider what we might say if all of us could speak out.
