To the Editor:

To stay sane last week, I felt compelled to drive to Glens Falls to die (“It’s not time to turn off the news,” March 24, 2017, Letter to the Editor). I’m learning that media coverage of events is more likely when the events are attention-getting.

It’s not that I mind looking ridiculous so much, if it’s what I must do. But lying on the sidewalk requires some forethought about getting back up again. I take inspiration after spotting a woman holding herself up with a large cane. She probably has 20 years on me and is not likely to be able to get down in the first place, so I throw caution to the wind and become prone.

I notice the lady I was chatting with during the speeches part of the rally is already sprawled out in front of me, looking a natural as a corpse. She had been holding the tombstone sign steadfastly blocking her face because she said she didn’t like calling attention to herself.

She didn’t even participate in family photos, so she was avoiding any media cameras. She had expressed doubt about lying down, as it was cold and uncomfortable in the afternoon shade. But I said I thought the die-in part only lasted a few minutes. Fortunately, I was right.

It was the anniversary of Barack Obama signing the Affordable Care Act and, symbolically, the day the House was planning to vote to repeal it. The rally took place outside Representative Elise Stefanik’s office, though she wasn’t there.

I wanted to be there in solidarity with the people from our neighboring county, as their representative has not been so supportive about health care as our own representative, Paul Tonko. The rumblings among the crowd are that Stefanik won’t hold a town hall meeting or answer her phone. Her constituents are trying to tell her they need to keep their health care.

I listen to their stories: an AIDS survivor explains that he depends on drugs that cost a zillion dollars a day; another person says her mom can’t be in a long-term care facility without Medicaid. And so on. The people there say Stefanik probably won’t vote for the ACA replacement bill anyway; it’s not bad enough — yet. It needs to have more benefits stripped away.

Traveling all the way from Altamont makes me an outside agitator, I suppose. I’ve gone from apolitical to agitator on a dime. There was one person I recognized from closer to home, the discussion leader who told me back in February that she was a leader only reluctantly.

I didn’t get a chance to ask her if she’s become more comfortable with leadership. It’s hard to imagine how she could be comfortable at this particular event at any rate, as she is obviously far along in pregnancy.

In the end, there was no House vote at all. Not enough support in the House. As someone once said, “No one knew health care was so complicated!” I celebrate that 2.7 million New Yorkers will not lose their health care, as the governor estimated. Or that the state’s budget will not be adversely affected in the amount of $3.7 billion.

But I know it is not all settled. There was something chilling about the president’s message on Friday that the ACA will be left to implode on its own. No fixes. A strange willingness to allow the country’s health-care system to fail without some needed repairs. I expect we will have to ask our state representatives to create a workable model for the rest of the country.

Hey, Mr. Seinberg, I expect you are celebrating spring now (“Staying sane: The impossible dream?” March 16). I am too, in my own way. It’s disheartening to me that the debate over health care has devolved into how little can pass for coverage, and that having more choices means choices between having health care or buying a cell phone (or maybe 700 phones?).

Taking a breath will just have to mean something else, because I have to think that all those calls and letters and petitions did have an effect last week. As I lay down, pretending to be dead, I can still peek up at the sky and use those few minutes to breathe, in the quiet of the crowd.

Fran Porter

Altamont