[0:00]when I was so sick that I couldn't move, I had lots of time to think. there were there were days and where I couldn't do much else but think and watch what was going on around me.
[0:12]What was happening to me was that thanks to a series of of medical mistakes, a condition which should have been treated, um, as you were kind enough to say, almost killed me.
[0:22]But what was happening around me taught me that that things that look to me at first like mistakes or like coincidence or like bad luck were actually part of a larger system.
[0:36]that I was getting, you know, as a very privileged person most of the time, a look into a system which is fundamentally based upon profit and based upon inequality.
[0:46]So, what what I tried to do was take notes um the things that happened to me, the things I saw happening to other people and make a diagnosis.
[0:55]And the diagnosis basically is this, that we we have a we have a notion of freedom, which is just too narrow, which is just too thin.
[1:03]If we don't think about our bodies when we talk about freedom, then other people are going to think about our bodies as a way to make profit and before we know it, the thing which we need to be free people fundamentally, our health is is bought and sold.
[1:17]So, that's the basic idea. before I get into some more of that, I want to just ask you, you know, this happened to you at the end of last year, 2019.
[1:27]Are you fully recovered, how do you feel?
[1:30]Oh, that's that's that's very kind of you to ask. Uh, I'm I'm not I'm not fully recovered, but I feel, I feel very, very good, all the same.
[1:41]Um, it sounds a little bit silly to say it, but I'm happy to alive be alive.
[1:47]I appreciate, I appreciate sounds and smells and tastes and all these other things, which I was taking for granted for a long time. I'm feeling really well. I'm feeling really well, thank you.
[1:58]I mean, you know, you saw a healthcare system and let's just, let's just, you know, list some of the issues where life expectancy is falling, infant and maternal mortality is high, profits are valued more than outcomes, you say.
[2:12]I guess I want to understand and American people will want to understand and people around the world, when you say that without access to proper health care, you cannot expect to have a proper democracy, a proper set of freedoms.
[2:30]Put those, put those two together. Why not? And how would it be rectified?
[2:35]I think that's, that's a really essential question for, for we Americans, and it's something that American Americans take for granted and that puzzles the rest of the world.
[2:46]We take for granted that health and health care is somehow a matter for the left and that liberty, freedom, um, that language is somehow a matter for the right, and we let them get separated.
