Why we must remix the human in healthcare
This is a call to remix the human in healthcare.
To crawl out from under the paperwork and back into our skin.
Because there is no billing code for empathy
And self sacrifice is not a sustainable business model.
Because the doctors who keep us alive are killing themselves in record numbers.
Because the prices are all a fiction and we’ve forgotten what we value.
Because you can’t just put bandaids on the gunshot wounds of the system.
Because Healthcare Inc. is sick.
And money is a hell of a drug.
Because if we keep spending like this we’ll bankrupt the country.
Because all the strategic investment in the world cannot make a system care.
Because not having money in this world does not make you unworthy of care.
Because a copay can’t hold your hand when you tell it you’re scared
Because someday it’s going to be me in that bed.
Because taking back healthcare is a human emergency.
Because this will not be easy.
This is a call to remix the human in healthcare.
Because pain is more than what the pills can quiet.
Because 80% of what keeps us healthy doesn’t even come from doctors.
Because sleep is medicine.
Because having a job to do is medicine.
Because sharing a joke with a friend is medicine.
Because feeling safe as you walk down the street is medicine.
People die every day from a lack of what we can learn from Frida and Basquiat and William Carlos Williams about medicine.
Because the ways in which we are sick demand a new imagination.
Because this world we make for each other is a gift.
And where I come from, a remix is a gift.
A blend you crafted from love and patience in front of a boombox.
Record/play pressed together to get just the right sample,
Songs laid out in the perfect order, hand lettered tracks and a collage on the case;
Because an assembly of difference is the best way to show how similar things are.
Because when we remix we dust off, we turn over and take apart.
We look with borrowed eyes at what we’ve seen a thousand times before.
Because these stuck and solid ideas melt in the heat of our curiosity.
And so -
A love letter,
a list of demands,
a remix from my ears to yours.
Because we are the overdose
Because we built this mess.
Because we are a powerful antidote.
Because everyone can tell things have to change,
But no one knows what will come next.
Because this will not be easy,
This is a call to remix the human in healthcare.
Because there’s no one else coming.
