THOR (Transgender Healthcare and Organising Resources) is a new collective for transgender people to share resources for activism and healthcare.
We aim to make a home for simple, accessible resources for trans people. Being a trans and/or nonbinary person is a lonely uphill struggle against the system – let’s make it less lonely. THOR wants to do more to fill the gaps and create radical, organised networks to spread information and connect international trans communities.
Ask us questions or submit us things! THOR is looking for:
- Opportunities, jobs, scholarships, and activist initiatives for trans people
- Personal experiences, strategies, events, and celebrations from activists
- Up-to-date logistics of social and medical transition around the world
- Simple summaries of useful legal, medical, and media information
- Compilations of widely used resources for trans people like financial aid, healthcare providers, social networks, clothing shares, and legal support
- DIY and how-to tutorials for trans media people, activists, and healthcare providers
Please signal boost widely. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
Tag: healthcare
I get really confused when americans, when talking about universal health care are like ‘yeh but it’s not free sweaty 🙂 🙂 you have to pay it through taxes 🙂 so gotcha!!’
and I’m like ….???? That’s the whole point??? Everyone pays their fair share so that no one has to be turned away because they don’t have insurance??? And no one has to set up a Fundraiser page just so that they DONT DIE???? So people don’t put off going to the doctor because they’re scared of going bankrupt?? Because healthcare is a RIGHT and should be free at the point of access?!?
“So no one has to be turned away” she says hahaha go to a universal health care country and get a necessary operation in less than a few years and come back and talk shit.
Look at the cure rates compared to mortality rates in universal health care countries and compare them to ours, then talk shit.
Tear your ACL in a universal health care country and see what the people say if you should go to their hospitals or go to an American hospital, then talk shit.
2010. I’d been feeling a bit ill. Work was going nuts, so I figured it was stress. Pretty good call considering a week later work fired their entire IT department (of which I was part).
But then I got sicker. And it turned out I had cancer.
Burkitt’s lymphoma, stage 4a. It had spread into my brain and spinal column. 90% cure rate, but I needed nine months of chemo – and not the outpatient chemo, nope, talking multiple week stays per round of the magrath protocol. Drugs were about 10k an IV bag. I was unemployed. And there were complications.
Thankfully I live in a country with universal healthcare. And it didn’t cost me a goddamn cent to save my life. I’m now officially past the five year mark to move me from “remission” to “Cured”.
I’ve lived in a universal healthcare country my entire life. And I’ve seen the US system in action. Your system is fucked. Straight up fucked. You’ve got fucking Dickensian shit going on there, people dying on streets from preventable causes or ending up broke for breaking a hip. Your health insurance companies have you by the balls and people like you are begging them to squeeze harder. What the actual fuck is wrong with you?
“But but but TAXESSSSSSSSS”
yeah no shit. That story above? Happened when I was 32. I’d spent 14 years of my life paying those fucking taxes that funded the system that saved my life. And guess what? Now I’m cured, I’m…Back..at work..And have been for several years…earning waaaay more money and paying back into the system.
This shit doesn’t exist in a vacuum, dickhead. You’re not feeding some imaginary pack of leeches, you’re paying forward on your own damned healthcare so you don’t have to argue with an insurance company while trying to heal.
Roe v. Wade Must Expand to Include Women In Prison
For many, accessing an abortion is difficult, but it’s an uphill and often impossible battle for people who are incarcerated. Trust me, I know. When I was incarcerated, I was denied an abortion when I asked for one, even though it’s nearly impossible for those who are in prison to access basic prenatal care. Preventative healthcare access is rapidly becoming a myth, especially for women living inside the prison walls.
Currently, there are just under 50,000 prisoners in Ohio, more than 4,000 of whom are female. Most people are aware that health conditions for people in jail are horrendous, but many are surprised to learn that the system’s shortcomings are even more significant and devastating for people who are pregnant. One in 25 female inmatesin state prisons are pregnant when they arrive. While many people boast that our country offers the best healthcare available, that claim couldn’t be further from the truth for people experiencing pregnancy while incarcerated.
I found out I was pregnant during the intake process. A nurse yelled, “Tell her it’s positive,” from another room. That was it. I had no choice but to keep moving through the intake process while my head was spinning. I was already having trouble processing the fact that I was jail—I’d been convicted of a minor, nonviolent crime and even my lawyer was shocked that my sentence included any jail time—and now they were telling me I was pregnant? I desperately needed to talk to my boyfriend, my family, a friend, anyone, but I couldn’t. I was totally on my own.
Later that night, when I finally had some time and space to think about the news, I came to the conclusion that while I loved my boyfriend and thought that we would be good parents, this wasn’t the right time for us to raise a child. I wanted to finish college. I wanted to become a parent eventually, but on my terms, under happy circumstances. Being pregnant in jail felt cold, terrifying, and wrong. Like my first abortion, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to have an abortion.
The jail kept all of the pregnant prisoners confined to one area called the Pregnancy Pod. When I got there it was completely overflowing with pregnant women who outnumbered the available beds—50 women in a pod that holds 30. The lucky ones got to climb cement blocks to sleep on a paper thin mattress with coils sticking through. The unlucky ones just slept on the floor. Even though the jail was legally required to provide us with food that met our nutritional needs, our meals often consisted of a shared banana and a single carton of milk. The cells in the pregnancy pod didn’t have toilets. If we needed to use the bathroom, we had to wait until we were allowed to leave our cells. Guards forced us to wait for hours if we needed to go. When you have a growing uterus pushing on your full bladder, being forced to wait for hours is pure torture.
I was locked in the pregnancy pod for about two weeks before I was able to visit a healthcare provider. During those two weeks, I had no idea how far along I was, and I didn’t have access to prenatal vitamins or any sort of medical care. As soon as I arrived for my appointment, I made it very clear that I wanted to have an abortion. The jail staff told me it wasn’t possible, “you’re only here 60 days,” they said, and if I wanted to have an abortion, I’d have to wait until I got out. I am not the only one.
While several courts have held that incarcerated women have the right to an abortion, many women aren’t able to get them because sheriffs refuse to pay for the transportation costs or monitoring, which is added to the cost of the abortion and totals tens of thousands of dollars. When I was released, I was around 20 weeks, so I was around 12 weeks when I went in. If that had happened now, I wouldn’t have been able to get an abortion because Ohio now bans abortion at 20 weeks, with no exceptions, a clear violation of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion until viability (between 24 and 28 weeks). What happens to the women who are asking for abortions, think they might be able to get one when they get out, and find that their constitutional right has been stolen from them?
American Medical Association says Senate health care bill violates pledge to “do no harm”
- The American Medical Association, the largest organization of physicians in the country, came out forcefully against the Senate Republican health care plan on Monday, saying the GOP’s plan would violate the industry-wide pledge to “do no harm.”
- “Medicine has long operated under the precept of Primum non nocere, or ‘first, do no harm,’” James L. Madara, the CEO of the association, wrote in a letter to senators laying out the group’s official position on the bill. “The draft legislation violates that standard on many levels.” Read more (6/26/17)
Republican senators’ fear is the only thing that will defeat this bill — and their fear is dependent on the volume and intensity of opposition. The whole point of Mitch McConnell’s strategy of writing the bill in secret and then quickly pushing it through is to minimize public attention and opposition. There are senators who right now are what we might consider “worried maybe” votes — they’ll vote yes if the risks don’t seem too great, but they could bail out if they can be made to fear a public backlash. Senators like Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia know that their states will be absolutely brutalized by this bill, but as of yet they haven’t been convinced that their constituents know that.
There are now 10 Republican senators who have either said they oppose the bill “in this form” — which means they could switch to support once some changes are made — or have publicly expressed their doubts about the bill without saying they oppose it. Today, Republicans released a revised bill addressing some of their concerns; it includes a provision locking people out of coverage for six months if they go without insurance temporarily, which is supposed to accomplish the same goal as the individual mandate. But the bill’s essence remains the same. Only if media attention to the bill’s horrors increases, and if the calls pour in to their offices, will they decide that the risks to themselves are too great.
There could be a tipping point at which Republicans start abandoning the bill en masse — but we aren’t nearly there. With a 52-48 majority, McConnell can only lose two votes on this bill, and he has probably already granted one to Heller, giving him permission to vote “no” in order to save his own skin. But if pressure increases and two more senators look like hard “no” votes, then you’ll probably see lots of senators abandon it, not wanting to be associated with something that was not only so substantively awful but also carries the stench of defeat. That will only happen, though, if they’re sure that the bill is headed for defeat. And that in turn depends on activists and constituents raising the stakes high enough to make supporting the bill seem incredibly dangerous.
It’s possible that the release of the CBO score of the bill — which could come as early as this afternoon — will be the event that focuses everyone’s attention on the bill’s consequences and elevates the volume of the debate to the point where senators can’t avoid the consequences of their decision. But that will only happen if those consequences are made undeniably clear to them.
Honest to God this isn’t even an exaggeration. It is a literal recap of what happened.
Want to take immediate revenge on House Republicans who voted to destroy health care? Here’s how
#votethemout
Contributing to oppositional nominee funds for 24 vulnerable Republican representatives is a way to get them good and scared now, so they won’t try any more shenangians.
Signal boost:
Contributing to oppositional nominee funds for 24 vulnerable Republican representatives is a way to get them good and scared now, so they won’t try any more shenangians.
This is so incredibly important, because they’ll be looking at fundraising, and so will the Senate.
These 217 House Republicans didn’t just tie themselves to a cruel and vindictive bill. They did it to prop up the most widely-despised president in the history of the country. They deserve to be destroyed, and they must be an example to anyone else who would take the same cruel and harmful actions in the future.
Yes.
Want to take immediate revenge on House Republicans who voted to destroy health care? Here’s how
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 