This essay, by Eva Ferguson, age 17, is one of the Top 12 winners of our Sixth Annual Student Editorial Contest, for which we received 10,509 entries.

We are publishing the work of all the winners and runners-up this week, and you can find them here as they post. Excerpts from some will also be in the special Learning print section on Sunday, June 9.

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U.S. Citizens Are Dying and We Can Save Them

I have a luxury that 27.3 million Americans don’t: health insurance. Without it, my family would be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt or I’d be dead.

In June of 2017 when my blood became dangerously acidic and my kidneys started to fail, I went to the ER. In June of 2017 when Alec Raeshawn Smith’s blood also became dangerously acidic, he died before anyone could save him. Alec didn’t have to die though; the insulin prescribed for his Type 1 diabetes could have saved him from the diabetic ketoacidosis that killed him. Alec, who had recently turned 26, could no longer afford his insulin because he was kicked off his mother’s health insurance plan. Unable to afford the $1,300 a month cost for his insulin, he turned to rationing the insulin and died within one month of becoming uninsured. In the weeks after both of our incidents with acidosis, I went back to hanging out with friends and enjoying my summer. Meanwhile, Alec’s family was left making funeral arrangements.