Cancer Patients Pursued | Ugandan Pop Stars Vie for Power

Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, chose a meeting with youth at his official residence to mock his principal political rival, rap musician Robert Kyagulanyi, better known as Bobi Wine. “Politics isn’t singing,” the 74-year-old leader said.

Four months later, the joke might well be on Museveni, one of the world’s longest-serving rulers who’s been in power since 1986. Politics isn’t singing. But in Uganda, those two worlds are converging like never before, offering an unlikely challenge to the country’s autocratic leader and his party, who have successfully fended off, coerced or coopted traditional political opponents for 33 years.

For the past two decades, I’ve been recording Japanese war stories. The question I often get asked, at least by friends in the West curious about my day job: “What’s it like talking to an atomic bomb survivor?”

Looking at a typical fieldwork session, I think it can safely be said, like nothing I’ve ever done before.

On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, 17-year-old Kato and his classmates were working at a chemical plant approximately 15 miles southwest of Hiroshima and didn't realize anything was out of the ordinary until the first staggering lines of shattered, burned survivors appeared.

Piles and piles of bills mounted in front of Krishale Fitzgerald, but that wasn’t what was at the top of her mind. Her neurofibrosarcoma, a cancer of the material that insulates nerves, had metastasized twice in two years, resulting in expensive surgeries and treatments, and her inability to work. Even though Fitzgerald had insurance, “just to survive I had to choose where I spent my money, and credit card bills and medical bills became the last thing on my priority list,” she says. To get the calls, letters and legal judgments to stop, she decided to file for bankruptcy.

If you live in the United States, you likely spend more on health care than you would if you lived in Switzerland or Canada or any other developed country. But what if you have a condition that requires intensive, long-term care and instead of spending the average $10,000 a year, you have to spend $30,000 or $60,000 or more? And what if you can’t afford to?

The percentage of Americans who are uninsured reached a four-year high recently, with nearly 14 percent of adults saying they have no coverage. But health insurance doesn’t protect against illness; it doesn’t even ensure you’ll get the treatment you need. In fact, in a recent study of people with metastatic breast cancer, nearly half had been pursued by debt collectors -- including approximately one-third of patients with insurance.