The One Fear I Didn’t Have Today

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I’m writing this from the waiting room of the hospital down the street from my house. My son is in surgery right now — getting his tonsils out. It’s a routine procedure. Everything is going to be fine. I know that. Logically, I know that.

But holy hell, the emotions.

I don’t like seeing my son in a vulnerable state. I don’t like knowing that, as I type this, there are people operating on him. I don’t like knowing there is absolutely nothing I can do to help him right now. He is going to be fine — and still, there’s this deep, visceral, gut-level thing that happens when you love someone the way I love my son. You worry. It’s like wearing your heart outside your body.

And sitting here with all of that, I started thinking about the last couple of weeks — the last couple of years — in American politics. And how maddening it is. Because of all the fears I’ve had today, not one of them was about the bill.

I haven’t worried for a single second about how we’re going to pay for this. I haven’t worried about our insurance. My wife and I are blessed — good careers, good coverage, well taken care of inside a deeply broken system.

Now think about everyone who isn’t.

Think about the families who can’t afford the care their kids need. Think about the people in rural areas watching their only hospital close its doors. Think about the people who just lost their coverage to the Medicaid and Medicare cuts in the Republican budget. It breaks my heart that this country — for all its wealth, all its power — shamefully fails to take care of people at the moments when they need it most.

My son is having his tonsils out because he’s been having trouble breathing. It’s been holding him back physically. Making it harder for him to sleep. He’s been getting strep throat constantly. His quality of life is about to get dramatically better because of a decision we made together, as a family — as scary as these things are.

It’s not so different from the surgery I had a couple of months ago. After losing 300 pounds, I had 25 pounds of excess skin removed. The quality-of-life improvement was enormous. Tonsils on a kid are a different thing, sure. But the principle is the same: you should be able to get the care you need, and you should be able to afford it.

And that principle is at the heart of why I support Medicare for All.

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It’s not complicated. People should have access to basic, fundamental care. Full stop. I don’t care if you want private insurance on top of it. I don’t care if your employer piles something extra on. Great. But goddamn it — every kid in this country should have access to the care my son is getting right now. Every parent should be able to get their kid the care they need without wondering whether doing it is going to wreck their family financially. Whether they need to get a second job just to make ends meet.

Because I’ll tell you: I know, logically, that my boy is going to be okay. But the way I felt when they wheeled him out of that room and sent us back to the waiting area? It fucking sucked. I don’t know how else to say it. It was awful. I’ve been sitting here in a daze, and the only thing I could think to do was pull out my phone and start talking, because I turned to my wife and said, “I’ve got a halfway decent idea for a rant.”

Now imagine feeling all of that — and on top of it, worrying about the money. Worrying about how you’re going to pull it together. Worrying about filling the gas tank on the drive home. Worrying about the grocery bill.

There are too many people in this country doing everything right. Taking care of their kids. Working hard. Showing up for their communities when they can. Following the exact path society laid out for them — and it is simply not working for them.

Yesterday, I was on Newsmax listening to a guy yell in my face about the “golden age of America.” Today, I’m sitting in a hospital waiting room thinking about how meaningless those words must sound to a parent wondering whether getting their kid the care they need means they won’t be able to make rent. You can call this a golden age. You can say the economy is great and the problem is just messaging. But eventually you have to contend with how people are actually living. And too many people are working their asses off and still don’t have anything solid underneath them.

We can do so much better than this. And we must. We don’t have to keep making it harder for people. Life is already hard enough.

And no, I’m not arguing for a life without work or struggle. That has never been the point. People are already working. They’re already struggling. That lazy, reductive attack Republicans reach for every single time — “Democrats just want to hand out free stuff” — is nonsense. They’re already taking care of their kids, showing up at their jobs, paying their bills, helping their neighbors and trying to build decent lives. A decent society doesn’t promise that life will never be hard. It gives people a foundation strong enough to face the hard parts when they come.

I want to give them a foundation. Something solid to build a life worth living on. I want to stop adding to the pile of things that already make it so hard just to exist.

Because life supplies plenty of fear all by itself. I know that today. I’m sitting here feeling it. My son is going to wake up soon. He’ll be groggy. He’ll be uncomfortable. The next few days probably won’t be much fun. And I’m going to worry about him, because I’m his dad, and apparently that’s the deal. There are some fears nobody can save us from. Whether you can afford to take care of your kid shouldn’t be one of them.

With urgency,

—Mike