On our Facebook, in response to Brian Sonenstein’s “Lawsuit: Corizon Doctor Tells New York City Inmate to Throw Severed Finger in Garbage,” Christine Robinett responded, “Sounds about right for the 98%, incarcerated or not. Far Too MANY doctors exploit their positions of authority as callous, bigoted, apathetic, even lazy towards those that aren’t richy rich.”

I asked her to elaborate a bit, and Christine wrote:

Yes. I’m fully aware of how many people are incarcerated, often for nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yes. I’m aware that much of what the [privatized] prison-industrial complex is about is fraudulently bilking the poor and vulnerable out of what little they have including their labor as modern day slavery.

My point in stating “incarcerated or not” is that we are all [the 98-99%] being forced against our will to suffer institutionalized bigotry at the hands of a callous, corrupt medical-industrial complex where many callous, corrupt, huckstering executives, administrators and providers gravitate to wield that authority over the masses.

What we need is a return to non-profit, community-based ownship of all things deemed an inherent right: health care, education, clean water, clean air, decent shelter. We all deserve to breathe, drink water, eat nourishing food, be reasonbly clothed, educated our health preserved in a compassionate, dignified, respectful manner.

It has been my personal experience to survive cancer for over 25 years. But to be treated as second-class, as a prostituting, promiscuous social deviant because of the type of cancer I had is not only humiliating, sexist, and at times torturous but just plain old immoral. Not to mention that for even longer no doctor would bother trying to differentially diagnose or treat the auto-immune condition that was obvious on lab tests.