by Jon Wesick
Affordable Healthcare lost his battle with cancer this week. Friends say he passed peacefully after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disconnected his ventilator. Doctors had been optimistic about his recovery until the Massachusetts Insurance Company refused to pay for standard chemotherapy labeling it an “experimental treatment.”
Best known for arranging free clinics that treated thousands of uninsured, Affordable Healthcare was a graduate of the Toronto School of Public Health. Inspired by a government that actually cared more for its citizens than its corporations, he tried unsuccessfully to adapt the Canadian insurance model to the United States. He is survived by his ailing wife, Hope. They have no children.
Republicans will mark Affordable Healthcare’s passing with a seven-course dinner at L’Auberge Chez Marcel.
In lieu of flowers mourners are requested to help pay Affordable Healthcare’s outstanding hospital bill.
Jon Wesick has a Ph.D. in physics, has practiced Buddhism for over twenty years, and has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. His chapbooks have won honorable mentions twice in the San Diego Book Awards.
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