Names of the Dead

Mark, a friend and employee, died 15 April 2005 after six months of steadily worsening heart problems. Mark had no health insurance or any possible way of obtaining affordable insurance. He was a member of the hard-working poor in a remote, rural community in the Alleghany Mountains of western Virginia. Mark was a gifted carpenter of tremendous skill, patience, perfectionism, heart and good humor, while also serving his community as a volunteer firefighter. I got to know Mark over nine months in 2004 when he worked on-and-off at my home. We parted in the fall, planning to resume work the following spring. Unbeknownst to me, Mark had started passing out and fainting during this winter hiatus. His close friends and family begged him to see a doctor, but he adamantly refused. Without health insurance, Mark had an almost pathological fear of the financial impact on his family of seeking medical help. His older brother, whose wife had health insurance from her job with the state of Virginia, had just had heart surgery and Mark knew what was involved as well as what his problems would probably require. After six months of growing progressively weaker, Mark was finally convinced to see a doctor. On the day he set off for his doctor's office in nearby West Virginia, he was so weak that he passed out behind the wheel, running off the road. A passerby stopped and helped him get back underway. But when Mark finally arrived at his doctor's, he passed out yet again. The doctor called an ambulance to rush him to the hospital. Mark lost consciousness either in the ambulance or shortly after arriving at the hospital. It was too late. He could not be revived and died in the emergency room. This was a senseless, human tragedy. I weep as I write these words and remember who Mark was - an uncommon individual whose likes I will never encounter again. As we tried to make sense of the way Mark slipped away from us, we could only surmise that he was trying to protect himself and his family from medical expenses that he knew he could not possibly re-pay. As a result of having known Mark and his story, I was deeply motivated to work on the 2008 Presidentail campaign in the state of Virginia in order to realize reform of a system that contributed to the death of my friend. I know there are thousands of other good men and women who are tragically, senselessly and needlessly slipping away from their families, their friends and their communities, as Mark did, due to the insane health care situation in this - the wealthiest nation earth. There is a struggle underway to see if politics, big business and business-as-usual will prevail while thousands of citizens of this country suffer. It's agonizing to watch people's lives being toyed with for campaign contributions and political point-scoring. If we can't reform health care in this country, I wonder if we can survive as a worthwhile society. This is the issue of our time!! Let's do it now and put an end to stories like Mark's.