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Ady Barkan Profile picture
Ady Barkan
@AdyBarkan
Fighting for social justice. Co-Executive Director, @BeAHero. Husband to @rachael_scar, Abba to Carl & Willow. Paralyzed by ALS. Author: Eyes to the Wind.
2 subscribers
Nov 2, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Hi all, this is Ady’s wife, Rachael. I’m devastated to share the news that Ady has died from complications of ALS. You probably knew Ady as a healthcare activist. But more importantly he was a wonderful dad and my life partner for 18 years. [1/4] A photo of a family on a path outdoors. A man is seated in a wheelchair with a woman standing to his right and a toddler girl standing next to her. A young boy stands to the left of the man. More from Jamila Headley, Ady’s co-lead at @BeAHero: [2/4]
Feb 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Do you have Medicare Advantage through United Healthcare, Humana, CVS Health/Aetna, Elevance (Blue Cross), or another private insurer?

Have you faced healthcare denials, delays, out of network issues, or huge bills? If so, we want to hear your story. Reply or send me a DM. 1/4 Recent investigations have found that the largest insurers in Medicare Advantage have committed widespread fraud and denied patients critical care they were supposed to provide by law, despite receiving billions of taxpayer subsidies. 2/4

nytimes.com/2022/10/08/ups…
Apr 28, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I got a copy of the AFP this morning. There's this great line in it that says "Biden has a plan to expand the ACA and lower prescription drug prices."

That's all good and well. But, after that line, there isn't a single ounce of detail about how we make that a reality. Image Don't get me wrong, the American Family plan has A LOT of good in its pages. It boldly takes on childhood poverty, it takes a step in the right direction on paid family leave.

But, other than that, the plan completely ignores our healthcare crisis.
Apr 20, 2021 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
I'm bringing my fight for single payer to my home state of California.

Over the next 8 weeks, I'll be interviewing progressive leaders and activists across the state about how we reach universal coverage here in the Golden State.

THREAD
We’ll be talking about the road to single payer here.

For decades, California has paved the way for real progressive reform. And now it’s time for CA to step up and show us what’s possible when it comes to our healthcare.
Dec 19, 2020 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
I am very late to this #MedicareForAll floor vote debate, but since it is still raging, I’ll join the fray by telling you a little story. In 2019, after I testified at the first ever #MedicareForAll hearing, I got back to Santa Barbara and realized that my own Democratic congressman was not a cosponsor of the bill! So I did some organizing.
Dec 16, 2020 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
UPDATE: Love you all. Due to your support, we’re getting these ads up in GA!

BUT our work is far from over. The stakes are too high. At the end of this thread, I’m going to ask you to help fund Spanish health care ads in GA.

First, I want to tell you about @ConMijente. @ConMijente has been doing the important work of organizing the Latinx community in GA to vote and engage in issues that lead to more justice and more equity.

Ahead of the runoffs, they have plans to knock the doors of *every* Latinx voter or family.
Aug 10, 2020 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
.@realDonaldTrump’s order to delay payroll taxes is a shameless stunt to try to defund Social Security and Medicare in the midst of a pandemic.

@SenatorCollins understands this, and yet she is letting Trump attack seniors - a key constituency she has pledged to protect.

THREAD The payroll tax directly funds Social Security and Medicare.

Trump's elimination of this tax, temporary or not, is meant to undermine these programs and hurt vulnerable seniors.

The President is robbing our seniors for a political stunt.
May 31, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Some reflections. Glad to be corrected by those who know more, or challenged by anyone.

These uprisings are good. And the police reactions are unveiling a deep reality.

The conflict is shifting political consciousness across the country.

And that is profoundly important. The left is being radicalized. During first wave of #BlackLivesMatter protests & organizing (Trayvon through summer 2016), the demands were for accountability and police reform. Centrists were calling for body cameras. But even the movement was calling for modest changes.
May 1, 2020 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Fuck. Fuck. This is bad. Fuck.

Big Pharma is moving to profit off of coronavirus.

Right before our fucking eyes.

But! We can stop them.

Short thread:

1. Two days ago, the NY Times reports *great* news. An Oxford research group is making real progress towards a vaccine. I won't get into the science, but the point is the Oxford group has a vaccine candidate that they already know is safe on humans AND works on monkeys.

Like, they gave 6 monkeys the vaccine, then exposed the monkeys to a ton of coronavirus, and 0 out of 6 developed COVID!
Nov 17, 2019 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I clerked for federal judge Shira Scheindlin in 2011-2012. I read hundreds of pages of evidence about the impact & (in)efficacy of stop-and-frisk. I delved deep into the legal arguments that NYC & the plaintiffs were making.

It was not a close call.

nytimes.com/2019/11/17/us/… The NYPD was committing constitutional violations against Black and Latino New Yorkers on a gargantuan scale. Millions of stops and frisks. Millions!

Bloomberg told his lawyers to fight fiercely to keep the program. They dragged out the litigation for six years.
Nov 15, 2019 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
We just had a baby, so I haven’t been able to write a full piece about this. But here is what I like the most about @ewarren’s #MedicareForAll transition plan: she’s aiming to accomplish as much as possible as quick as possible.

And to use that success to win the full enchilada. She’s laid out in full details her answers to the following three questions:
What can the president do with executive action?
What can be accomplished with 51 votes in the Senate?
What can be accomplished with 60 votes, or the abolition of the filibuster?
Sep 18, 2019 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
An update on my health.

It’s been increasingly hard for me to breathe on my own, so I’m going to the hospital for a pretty big surgery tomorrow.

I am getting a traecheostomy. Heavy times for our family. My surgeon will cut an opening in my throat and insert a plastic tube, so a ventilator can be hooked up directly to my lungs.

With this setup, I may be able to live for many more years.
Jul 21, 2019 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
My first symptom was a weak left hand. I had trouble turning a key, shuffling cards, playing guitar chords. That was late summer, 2016.

I was diagnosed that October. 32 years old, life expectancy 3-4 more. Over the next three years, ALS paralyzed the rest of my body.

My right hand started losing strength in mid-2017.

And last week, I reached a new milestone. I can no longer operate the joystick on my wheelchair. I'm stuck in place, until someone moves me.
Apr 25, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
People. The central narrative of American political history playing out before your eyes:

Every time Black folk&allies build enough power to make politics more fair, white supremacists use the 1-2 punch of mass incarceration & disenfranchisement to reinstate racial oppression. After the Civil War, southern whites enacted the Black Codes, which made being unemployed & loitering & a million other things punishable by imprisonment and hard labor, ie, slavery.

So the antislavery coalition enacted the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments to the Constitution.
Mar 23, 2019 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The worst part of my ALS, by far, is how it constrains my ability to be the father Carl deserves, the father I want to be. One hundred times every day, I despair at my inability to tickle and chase him, to help him build towers and train tracks, to bellow and headbang alongside him, to make messes together and then clean them up. . . .
Mar 6, 2019 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Thank you so much Senator! I just got home and am feeling dramatically better. Good as new, in fact, or as we in the chronic disease world prefer to say, "back to baseline!"

My stay taught and highlighted a few things for me. 1. Almost all health care professionals are ridiculously good at their jobs and ridiculously good human beings. I'm talking about the nurses, techs, therapists, janitors, cafeteria workers, admin staff, doctor, everyone.
Mar 4, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm being admitted to the hospital tonight for the first time since I was 13.
I got pneumonia because, most likely, I aspirated food or liquid.

This is how ALS works. It gets worse and worse. Life becomes harder and harder. Even fun becomes more arduous. If you have your health, I urge you to cherish it every day. Say thanks for it, and never take it for granted.

Make the best use you can of your brief time on this earth. Do today what will make you proud tomorrow, proud on your deathbed.
Feb 26, 2019 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
I've got some incredibly exciting news for anyone who cares about health care and the well-being of people with disabilities in America. #MedicareForAll

As you may know, people who need long term care currently can't get it through Medicare if they want to stay in their home... ...They have to be institutionalized or impoversh their family and go on Medicaid. 

Well, we've got a plan to change all that! 

@RepJayapal has written a bill that provides healthcare for all. And all means all, including disabled people like me.
Feb 11, 2019 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
A thread on @IlhanMN, anti-semitism, and my personal experience with @AIPAC’s money.

In 2006, I was the first real staffer on a long-shot Democratic Congressional race in deep red Ohio. My boss was a hippie doctor with a lefty perspective on international affairs... (Continued) ...very skeptical of military force, opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, etc.

A month after winning the Dem primary, we were struggling to gain attention or money. Nobody gave us a snowball’s chance to win. But one political action org proactively reached out to us.
Nov 18, 2018 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
Today I’m excited to endorse @NancyPelosi for Speaker of the House of Representatives.

It’s really important that all progressives push to elect her in the coming weeks, for 3 good reasons.

Short thread below. 1. From 2007-11, @NancyPelosi was the most effective and progressive Speaker of the House in many decades.

If the bills she passed out of the House had made it out of the Senate as well, we would be living in a dramatically better world.
Nov 15, 2018 • 8 tweets • 5 min read
There is a very important meeting happening within the Democratic Party right now. Here are my thoughts about it. 1/ The question on the table is what kind of a Democratic Party is going to govern the House of Representatives. Will it be progressive? Or moderate? Will it pursue #MedicareForAll? Will it repeal the #TaxScam? How bold will its agenda be? 2/