Today is #WorldAIDSDay. I have been living with HIV/AIDS for over a decade, so here's to another year we have survived. Earlier this year, my private health insurance decided to suddenly stop covering the life-saving medication I had been taking successfully for years.
It was a bureaucratic nightmare, they said they had a "new list" and wanted me to take something else (for seemingly no reason I could discern). It took over two months. This wasn't the first or second time this has happened, but it never fails to scare the shit out of me. Without meds, I am one of those who gets sick quick. I have been very sick before. Healthcare insecurity in the US is trip sometimes. I've seen so many sides of it, Medicaid, Medicare, to the private insurer I've had the last 5 years. It ALL sucks when you have AIDS!
AIDS clinics and service organization fail us by design. Until these institutions are taken and fundamentally transformed by the patients and workers, they will continue to fail us. These institutions are not class neutral, they are designed to serve people who are not us.
People living with HIV/AIDS have no future in capitalism. There is no horizon of hope where private production mediates our care and treatment. It will continue to affect the people who are most disposable by this system. Our lives are in the clutches of austerity regimes.
This is the first World AIDS Day that we are passing without the peculiar personality of Larry Kramer. Always controversial and divisive, an older me has come to appreciate him, as he continues to frustrate me. Here's a eulogy I wrote earlier this year: https://spectrejournal.com/on-larry-kramer/
Comments
Top
New
Community
No posts