In The Great Recession, Even Death Is Too Expensive For The Poor

Rita is only in her 30s, but she knows all about death. What she didn't know until recently is how expensive it is, especially now in the Great Recession, for the poor to die.

Rita's parents, her only relatives in the U.S., died in a car crash during her sophomore year in community college. Rita dropped out of school to earn a living as a shipping coordinator at a Bay Area package company. A few years later, she found herself coughing and coughing. She was always short of breath. Tests revealed that Rita had a rare and fatal disease of unknown origin--one that leads to the slow closure of the blood vessels feeding the lungs. She will suffocate to death before the age of 40.

“I know the end is coming,” she tells her doctor and nurses; after many meetings with her chaplain, she is, she says, "at peace." At the medical clinic in San Francisco’s General Hospital, Rita tells anyone who will listen that she has two goals. She wants to continue living with her cat in her one bedroom apartment in the Mission District of San Francisco. And she hopes to continue receiving the few medications that mitigate her symptoms.

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