It was New Year’s Eve in Toronto. As people partied like it was 1999, 26-year-old Henry Masuka watched his young son’s life hang in the balance. In 2002’s “John Q,” Denzel Washington played a father who took an emergency room hostage after the hospital and insurers denied his son a heart transplant. But in 1999, Masuka’s story was real.
Doctors promised to send a respirator for Masuka’s asthmatic three-year-old. It never arrived. After rushing to the hospital because the child had stopped breathing, there was a 45-minute wait. Masuka allegedly held a replica gun to a doctor’s head, desperately demanding help.
In the movie, both John and his son survive. A pro bono transplant and a light prison sentence complete the Hollywood ending. In real life, Masuka’s son lived, but his father didn’t. Cops shot him dead.
Unlike Canada, there’s no U.S. universal healthcare, partly because of slavery.vTwenty-six million people in the U.S. are uninsured and 43 million are underinsured. About half of U.S. adults struggle to afford healthcare costs. Forty-one percent have medical debt.
The healthcare industry’s violence, coupled with police who arrived to enforce it, killed Henry Masuka in 1999. Today, different authorities and institutions still act in solidarity to exploit our precarity. But we fight back. We’ve seen rent parties and Panther survival programs. Today, communities organize mask blocs and reproductive and gender-affirming care collectives. They act in solidarity. We do, too.