the hauntingly personal stakes of healthcare made vivid
Forgive Splinter (AKA Univision’s Fusion but with a new face) for its inherently shudder-inducing name, and just read How to Not Die in America: a essay from January from staff writer Molly Osberg that’ll make you think more about the mother of all clusterfucks that is healthcare in America than anything else.
How does Osberg do this? Not by pulling up any forgettable charts or faceless statistics; instead, she simply and deftly relates the excruciatingly nightmarish details of her own medical Worst Case Scenario, from both the point of view of a gainfully employed media professional as well as her alternate universe selves (who would have been still freelancing or part-timing as a barista or doing literally anything else that could have made Worst Case Scenario even Worse).
For anyone in media (or, tbh, anyone just learning about the witchery of deductibles), it’s a WebMD horror story y’all can picture personally for yourselves in HD — making this essay a uniquely damning critique of the industry that you won’t just scroll through.
Like Deez Links? Forward this to more personal essays that tell what the stats alone can’t!