The Premium Of Pain

The waiting room buzzes,

fluorescent and cold,

a place where suffering is barcoded,

where every cough is a dollar sign,

where a pulse is measured not in beats but in bills.

Here, healing is a privilege.

The body is collateral.

A broken arm is a loan.

A diagnosis is a debt.

The cure is locked behind paperwork and premiums,

and the illness waits patiently, licking its teeth, knowing delay is its greatest ally.

They say insurance,

as if the word meant safety.

But what is insured?

Not your life.

Not your breath.

Only profit, only the guarantee that someone richer than you will always win.

Illness learns the loopholes.

Illness knows the way policies deny what prescriptions demand.

Illness, it thrives in the hold music,

in the appeals process,

in the letters stamped: not covered.

Meanwhile, the body keeps burning,

fever climbing, cancer blooming, lungs gasping like unpaid rent.

And still they ask for more.

More signatures, more proof, more patience, more money.

The truth is this;

in America, you do not live by breath alone,

you live by paperwork,

by numbers on a screen.

You live,

by what the system decides your worth is.

And too many times, the system whispers back;

Not worth enough.

So illness rules,

a quiet tyrant.

And the promise of care becomes only another name for ransom.