people with serious mental illness have a life expectancy that's up to 25 years shorter than the general population.

The recording is hard to hear, the doctor's voice a bit distant. But he tells Hickson: "The decision is: Do we want to be extremely aggressive with his care or do we feel like this would be futile?"

And then he adds: "As of right now, his quality of life — he doesn't have much of one."

Hickson challenges the doctor. "What do you mean?" she asks. "Because he's paralyzed with a brain injury, he doesn't have quality of life?"

"Correct," the doctor replies.

Finally.

“The technology that powers the nation’s leading automated speech recognition systems makes twice as many errors when interpreting words spoken by African Americans as when interpreting the same words spoken by whites.”

Imprisoning a Black disabled kid during a pandemic for sleeping in on a school day is everything that’s wrong with the State.

“Ableism must be included in our analysis of oppression and in our conversations about violence, responses to violence and ending violence. Ableism cuts across all of our movements because ableism dictates how bodies should function against a mythical norm—an able-bodied standard of white supremacy, heterosexism, sexism, economic exploitation, moral/religious beliefs, age and ability. Ableism set the stage for queer and trans people to be institutionalized as mentally disabled; for communities of color to be understood as less capable, smart and intelligent, therefore “naturally” fit for slave labor; for women’s bodies to be used to produce children, when, where and how men needed them; for people with disabilities to be seen as “disposable” in a capitalist and exploitative culture because we are not seen as “productive;” for immigrants to be thought of as a “disease” that we must “cure” because it is “weakening” our country; for violence, cycles of poverty, lack of resources and war to be used as systematic tools to construct disability in communities and entire countries.“

From the “all landlords are bastards” department.

The death of Carrie Ann Lucas is inspiring people to start the Medical Abuse Hotline.

This has been needed for a long time and is long overdue.

Carrie Ann Lucas's blog post documenting how what became her end-of-life care cost her ability to speak, and endless trauma and medical errors.

Carrie Ann Lucas died because United Healthcare didn't want to pay $2k for a life-saving antibiotic. Instead, what turned into her end of life care cost over $1million.

Because they denied an antibiotic that should never have cost so much in the first place.

During Katrina, one hospital used morphine and versed to kill patients deemed too fat or too sick to rescue.

People with disabilities are more likely to die of breast cancer. They also have a much harder time accessing mammograms.