Missed it in the Morning

by Mikayla Tillery (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find India

My ninth grade biology class showed me that I did not want to be a doctor. Somewhere between Punnett Squares and Ribosomes, my goal shifted from MD to JD. As I got older, I reaffirmed those clear distinctions between health and humanity by loading my schedule with history classes and shuddering at the thought of derivatives. There were conflicts in Kashmir and the development of REGN-EB3. Two ends of the spectrum—equal but opposite. And whether it was the result of my immeasurable thirst for diplomacy, or the B on my transcript, I found myself discussing impeachment because intussusception felt so foreign. All of that came to a head when public health introduced me to the intersection of science and politics beyond the fact that they are both required to graduate. It became clear to me how the Affordable Care Act could never be independent from the medical community when 50,000 American citizens die every year because they lack insurance. There is no division when physicians take the Hippocratic Oath to treat every person, but poverty becomes a death sentence. When the cost of insulin skyrockets, but the cost of production stays the same, medicine is just as much political as it is innovation today. Consequently, my goals of changing the world through policy would not be finished in my government class but, rather, extend to the scientific journals hidden on the bottom shelves of my school’s library. That same desire for healthcare justice brought me to a different continent, speaking no Hindi, and advocating for healthcare reform alongside Indian students. The Global Youth Congress not only challenged my capacity for finding solutions, but it challenged the arrogance I held regarding speaking English. It is one task to reform the Affordable Care Act as an underaged girl who is still on her parents’ insurance, but it is another to convey the American healthcare crisis to Indian bureaucrats and teenagers who had never heard of health insurance. They faced the same ideological and linguistic barrier when describing government hospitals to us. As much as euthanasia and deductibles may be healthcare dog whistles in American debate, this program showed me that rhetorical pretension has no place in creating progress. Although I may have been in a village 8,000 miles away from my home, I saw the same stratification that flourishes in our broken system amplified. The people of Satoli do not have the privilege of separating their government and their health; they vote for the people who keep them alive. In the United States, we are approaching that precipice. We are reaching the edge where my grandpa has to ration his insulin so politicians can keep voting with their wallets. We are reaching the edge where my parents have told me to call an Uber over an ambulance so that they can afford the mortgage. The dichotomy is deadly when patent law kills millions, yet those elected to protect and serve do not take action because our perpetual sickness makes them richer. If I could go back and change anything about my high school career after learning about how meaningful healthcare legislation becomes when the seemingly infinite resources are stifled by greed, I would tell myself that the world outside of Butler Senior High School does not care about the prefix or job title of the people that create change; that is a diversion of energy. Instead, the world needs someone who, above art and science, is here to serve a constituency and to quite literally keep them alive. Even if that person got a B in ninth grade biology.