The Ford Expedition rumbled to a stop and Cindy Banda’s bedazzled flip-flops landed on the asphalt of the Houston cancer center’s vast parking lot.
asserted
flops → rumble → lot
She threaded through the rows of cars, a tally of patients who gather here to sit with chemotherapy needles or lie on radiation machines.
asserted
who → thread → machines
The elevator dinged open.
asserted
elevator → ding → ?
A year ago in this building, surgeons removed Banda’s right breast, and she still didn’t know whether treatment had expunged the cancer from her body.
asserted
treatment → remove → body
Doctors had told her it would be tough to beat.
asserted
it → tell → her
“I’m more of a positive person myself,” Banda said, now sitting with a white wristband in a dim waiting room.
asserted
Banda → ’m → room
But the bills are harder to dismiss, and the single mother with six children in her care repeated something like a mantra.
asserted
mother → dismiss → mantra
That’s true for many Americans, as rising healthcare costs leave more families with a sinking feeling after seeing the bill for surgery or medication.
asserted
costs → ’ → surgery
Heading into the Nov. 3 midterm elections, about half of registered voters said healthcare costs are a major problem for them and their families, up from a little more than one-third four years ago, according to a Fox News poll from September.
uncertain
costs → head → September
With party control of Congress at stake, registered voters are nearly twice as likely to say they trust Democrats over Republicans to handle healthcare, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from the same month.
uncertain
they → register → month
Those frustrations, combined with broader concerns over rising prices, have sapped support for President Donald Trump and his Republican Party.
asserted
frustrations → combine → Trump
Banda knows how that feels.
asserted
that → know → ?
She backed Trump in each of his three campaigns, motivated by her opposition to abortion.
asserted
She → back → abortion
But when cancer came, the ensuing scramble to make ends meet was painful enough to rearrange her priorities, and she started to think about voting Democratic for the first time.
asserted
she → come → time
The 46-year-old was ushered into a sterile room for her appointment, her phone lit up with a text.
asserted
phone → usher → text
“This one’s $1,300,” she said of the car payment bill.
asserted
she → ’ → bill
“I have to go back to work.”
asserted
I → have → work
She had been on sick leave from her job selling internet service for one year, and she needed the income to support her three kids and three more she had taken in after her sister’s death.
asserted
she → sell → death
The doctor said her reconstruction surgery could be scheduled early next year.
uncertain
surgery → say → ?
“I was hoping for maybe December,” Banda said, “only because I’ve met my deductibles.”
asserted
I → hop → deductibles
Come January, she would have to pay down the $7,500 again.
asserted
she → come → 7,500
Earlier may be possible, the doctor replied, if the skin around her surgical scar loosens.
uncertain
skin → reply → scar
The evening had cooled slightly by the time she walked back through the rows of parked cars, their ebb and flow marking the tide of sickness, survival and death in a small corner of a colossal healthcare industry that saves lives while taking in over $5 trillion every year.
asserted
that → cool → trillion
Banda paid $8 for parking as she left.
asserted
she → pay → parking
Confronting death and debt in America before a midterm election
Two weeks later, Banda was back at work, making door-to-door rounds to sell Spectrum’s Wi-Fi in McAllen, her city along the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley.
asserted
Banda → confront → Valley
Banda, holding blue flyers, walked along a row of storefronts, some that shuttered since she last was in the area.
asserted
she → hold → area
She hadn’t had a sale and commission since October of last year, after the biopsy and diagnosis.
asserted
She → have → biopsy
The doctor who gave her the news had hugged Banda, and she sobbed even though she never really sobs in front of other people.
asserted
she → give → people
During chemo, her children took turns buzzing off her wispy hair.
asserted
children → take → hair
When her 9-year-old daughter’s hand quivered, a teenage cousin helped guide the clipper over her mother’s scalp.
asserted
cousin → quiver → scalp
Banda’s first impulse was to maintain normalcy, stability, for the children.
But that requires roughly $7,000 a month for utilities, mortgage, car payments and groceries, along with the two water leaks.
asserted
that → maintain → leaks
Then, even with insurance through her job, the surgeries, chemo and radiation added up to over $25,000 that she’s been paying off, making Banda one of tens of millions of other people in the United States in medical debt.
asserted
Banda → add → debt
Banda tries not to dwell on death and debt.
asserted
Banda → try → death
“It’ll consume you,” she says.
asserted
she → consume → you
She smothers those thoughts beneath her bubbly demeanor and avoids being alone.
asserted
She → smother → demeanor
But that truce, between her insistence on positivity and the fears that it covers, is brittle.
asserted
it → cover → that
Certain thoughts still arrive uninvited.
asserted
thoughts → arrive → ?
Banda’s late sister, Melissa, didn’t have life insurance.
asserted
sister → have → insurance
Banda makes sure it’s a payment she never misses.
asserted
she → make → ?
“Sometimes I think, and I shouldn’t think like this, but I’m worth more gone than here,” she said one day.
asserted
she → think → more
…and 37 more, not listed.
The Aporia
