Tell me a story about someone being awesome

When Denny Buehler had cancer, his Cincinnati neighbors rallied to help his family pay the medical bills. Denny didn’t make it, but two generations of his family have been “paying it forward” ever since — in ways that keep getting more ambitious and inspiring. This story has everything: laughter and tears, yes. But also softball, punk rock, John Oliver, tacos, and millions of dollars in medical debts, made to vanish.

24 year-old Manny Lanza died because he was uninsured, and his grieving parents raised hell. Their story helped shame New York legislators into passing a law that forced hospitals to treat uninsured patients and forgive some of their bills.

When her daughter was born with hearing loss, Stephanie Wittels Wachs found out insurance didn’t cover hearing aids for kids. Texas law didn’t require them to. Stephanie decided that had to change. So she made it happen — teaming up with other parents, and drawing strength from a well of rage and grief over a family tragedy. 

Journalist Wendi C. Thomas exposed a Memphis hospital’s thousands of lawsuits against impoverished patients, including their own employees — and got them to stop.

A few years ago, author and YouTube star John Green got obsessed with tuberculosis — and with the global system of patent law keeping lifesaving drugs out of the hands of people who need them. Here’s how he rallied his online community of “nerdfighters” to take one drugmaker to task, joining a community of activists spanning four continents. (It’s a two-parter.)

In the early 1960s, Jan de Hartog moved to Houston — and fell in love with the bustling, futuristic home of NASA and the Astrodome. But he also discovered the city’s harsh underside: a neglected charity hospital where largely African-American patients were left to seek health care in unsanitary and unsafe, hellish, conditions. 

De Hartog and a group of Quaker volunteers waged a campaign to change that. More than sixty years later, their legacy is Dr. Ricardo Nuila’s beloved workplace, and the subject of his book, “The People’s Hospital.”