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I pay more than 3x Trump's yearly taxes EVERY MONTH for COBRA ($2398 a month.) When I caught COVID in March & couldn't breathe, I was told going to the hospital in NY would kill me. I can't walk up stairs without my heart hitting 145 bpm. But sure. Don't let it dominate you.
Oy. Okay. This tweet has gone viral: an apt word, but you guys have many questions, so let me answer in one place. No, @TheAtlantic doesn't pay my health insurance. I'm a contributing writer, not staff. I lost my full-time job to COVID layoffs. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2020/05/fired-zoom-layoffs-coronavirus/611509/
In 2019, I had 4 jobs: a full-time writing job at a tech company, a staff writing job on the new @netflix show EMILY IN PARIS, my columns at @TheAtlantic, and a book I sold to @penguinrandom called LADYPARTS (8/2021), a memoir of being unhealthy in America. A comedy! Yes, really.
I have learned not to rely on health insurance from employers. "At will" contracts are a bitch, and I've been burned too many times. So I've been getting my health insurance from the @WGAEast. Because of my screenwriting work.
To be eligible for @WGAEast health insurance––which is GREAT health insurance––you have to earn $39K a year in screenwriting fees from a signatory company. I only earned $66K helping to create EMILY IN PARIS, leaving me $14K short in being able to stay on my health insurance.
Yes, that's very little for a TV writing gig. A long boring story I won't go into. Also, so many of us who bring you the news do so for peanuts, ever since social media killed our industry. I get paid what Trump paid in taxes (or sometimes much less) for every story I write.
Anyhoo, I'm currently receiving $504 a month in unemployment, since losing my tech job. I'm finishing my book. I just sold it to TV, so six months from now, after that $ comes in, I'll hopefully get my WGA health insurance back...
...and my COVID-triggered POTS is manageable, and I have a bit of savings left, so don't cry for me. Cry for the families of the hundreds of thousands who've died, leaving craters of grief and empty table seats behind. Cry for those who can't afford health insurance.
Cry for those currently suffering from COVID without access to care. Cry for our country, whose standing in the world has been destroyed by this president. And then, on November 3rd, vote as if your life depends on it. Because it does.
Oh, and for all of you asking why I didn't just go on the ACA when my insurance ended, I was afraid this president would follow through on his promises and kill it, leaving me, my many pre-existing conditions, and my three children (I'm a single parent) with no health insurance.
Another clarification: The extra money over $39K earned via screenwriting in 2019 gets carried over to 2020. So I hit my required earnings in 2019 but fell short in 2020 by $14K.
And to all of those asking who told me I'd end up dead going to a hospital in virus-inundated NY at the end of March, when 700 people a day were dying, and the freezer trucks ran out of room, and the stench of death was everywhere? My doctors.
Woo, boy. Checking back on this tweet midday. I see my tossed off pre-breakfast COVID rant has hit a nerve. Let's take that anger and turn it into action. The vote: my friend @ayeletw has been sending out thousands of postcards a day with this organization https://postcardstovoters.org/
Another idea: my cousin Jeremy Copaken, one of the kindest humans no longer on earth, died in 2014 at 39 of diabetic shock. No one in America should die of undiagnosed diabetes but he did. I blame our byzantine healthcare system. 100%. His parents, my Uncle Bob & Aunt Marcelle...
...set up a scholarship award in his name. The "Kindness Award," for that student in Jeremy's school, Rockville High School in Rockville, MD, who is the kindest in their class. Details are here: https://tikvatisrael.org/copakens-launch-kindness-award-in-sons-memory/#.X3y46ZNKjUI
You can also donate to #BlackLivesMatter 
, since racial and ethnic disparities in insurance and healthcare access impacts everything from maternal-infant health to how black and brown people fare with COVID-19: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019
, since racial and ethnic disparities in insurance and healthcare access impacts everything from maternal-infant health to how black and brown people fare with COVID-19: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019
One last thought, however seemingly obvious: Access to healthcare in the richest country on earth should not be a privilege. It is a human right. But in our country, the pharmaceutical and insurance industry tails wag the dog of American lives. Why? Pull up a seat...
The pharmaceutical lobby is the most powerful lobbying group in the U.S. by nearly a factor of 2, pumping over $4.2 billion into lobbying efforts since 1998. Every year they donate hundreds of millions of dollars to those candidates who will protect their financial interests.
One can also reasonably argue that in his majority opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, Chief Justice Roberts personally killed 15,600 Americans by creating the legal rationale which would allow states to opt-out of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.
Meanwhile, let's look at just one pharmaceutical industry: Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier received a 2019 pay package worth $22.6 million while also selling $54.8 million in his own stock between July 2018 and July of 2019.
Several smart economists studied the numbers in 2017 and all but named the pharmaceutical industry a ponzi scheme. From 2008 until 2017, Merck distributed 133% of its profits to shareholders.
Even I, who was as pitiful at playing Monopoly in my youth as I am in understanding simple economics today, can tell you that a business that gives away more than 100 percent of its profits to shareholders is Bernie Madoff-level unsustainable.
Speaking of Bernies, though I voted for @ewarren in the primaries, I'm a big fan of @SenSanders Medicare for All bill. Here's a handy-dandy link: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1129/text
All this to say, this isn't rocket science. Actor & healthcare activist @robdelaney should not have to stay in England, just to get decent healthcare for his family. I shouldn't kick myself for leaving Paris in 1992, where I could visit any doctor any time and not pay a centime.
We can't all have teams of dudes in white coats, helicopters, and posh suites at Walter Reade. But we shouldn't have to take Uber Pool to the emergency room, as I once did while hemorrhaging from vaginal cuff dehiscence, because we're worried about the cost of an ambulance. END
Ugh. REED. Walter Reed. Spelling was never my thing.
