What killed my father, on paper, was diabetes and kidney failure: common indeed, the eighth- and tenth-leading causes of death in the United States in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But failing organs, life-threatening infections, death in his sixties—these were not inevitable outcomes, nor matters of pure chance and inheritance, an avalanche of genetic misfortune. He needed access to quality health care in order to manage and treat his illnesses. He needed it throughout his life, not only in his final years, when it was granted as a crisis response only after his kidneys
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