My name is Jill Grundberg. “Nora Cameron” is a pseudonym I used when I started this blog. Now that I have learned how little anyone cares what one says on the Web, I have decided to drop it.

I live with my husband on five acres of land in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, in Calaveras County, CA. It’s what they call the Gold Country, because a large number of people went there in 1849 hoping to get rich. The place is still trying to recover. I make my living as a technical writer, mostly telecommuting to my job in Oakland, but manifesting bodily in the office a day or two a week for meetings and to prove to my boss that I exist. 

I spent most of my thirties without health insurance. In those days I was a clerical worker in academic libraries, what we used to call a permatemp. I worked on a grant-funded project that the public university that employed me knew would take about ten years to complete. In order to avoid paying me benefits, they fired me every year on September 29, then rehired me in October 1. A man I know who still works for that institution tells me that the permatemp dodge is now illegal and I should sue for pension benefits. I cannot make him understand how I shudder at the very idea.

Those years gave me a long time to consider the systems we use in the U.S. to deliver health care and other basic support to people. I had to look directly at the fact that the so-called adult human world in which I found myself did not give a damn whether I lived or died, so long as I did not get in the way of some people making as much money as they possibly could.

Even though technically I have been insured since then, we all know what that has come to mean. I have had my share of dark early mornings, waking in pain to the sound of rain on the window, when my first thought was not, “What is wrong with me?” but, “How am I going to pay for this?” I have spent fourteen months getting a condition diagnosed that is life-threatening if not treated. I have felt the pressure to be a good girl and not bother the nice doctor when he’s very busy, and I have had to make a witch of myself to get what my employer and I have supposedly paid for.

I have also been a practicing Buddhist for 28 years, first in the Soto Zen tradition and later in the Tibetan Nyingma tradition. Like most religions, Buddhism has a good deal to say about sickness and death and how one understands those aspects of human existence. The things I have learned from Buddhist teachings and practices shine a particular light on the dilemma of health care in the U.S. Although I have read fairly extensively on the subject, I have not seen anyone else say the things I have been thinking about it. So I have started this blog in order to add those few things to the discussion.

It is my sincere hope that the new president is the beginning of real reform in how we care for the sick and dying. It is almost too late already–eight years ago would have been better. But if it does not happen now, I think we are in for a very dark and painful time over the forty to fifty years it will take for the post-World-War-II baby boom to die off. From what I have read, the health insurance industry thinks it can sit tight, blame the old and the sick, and survive with its dominance intact. I do not want to see that happen. Not only does it mean that I personally would face a painful and neglected old age and death, but it also means that we as a culture risk losing a significant piece of our humanity, the ability to care for others. That is what has inspired me to try writing this. If you, reading this, are working for change in this area, through political channels or any other means, please feel free to use these ideas. I do not require credit.