He Should Still Be Here

Update: RIP Jean Descamps

Jean Descamps, 26, died of an overdose in December 2023 within hours of being discharged from Providence Milwaukie Hospital in Oregon. Staff called him a "malingerer" and said he was faking his symptoms and sent him out into the cold in a wheelchair. Police bodycam footage shows officers begging the hospital not to release him. They did anyway. He was dead before morning. (See https://www.npr.org/2026/08/06/nx-s1-5845162/addiction-treatment-overdose-deaths)

His addiction was real. But it wasn't a medical evaluation that decided he didn't deserve care that night — it was staff members' opinions of him. That is medical blacklisting. It is legal right now, and it is killing people.

This is exactly what the Medical Blacklisting Prevention Act is built to stop: a provider's label or opinion, with no real medical evaluation behind it, deciding whether a patient lives or dies. This week's healthcare roundtable at the White House is proof this issue is finally getting real attention at the highest level. Now we need it to become our laws.

RIP Jean. You should still be here.

What you can do right now:

1. Share the petition: https://www.change.org/End_Medical_Blacklisting — on Facebook, in a text to three people, anywhere. Every share reaches someone who has lived this or knows someone who has. 
2. Tell your story in the comments. Your story is what makes this real to the people who can change it.

And to everyone who has already signed, shared, told your story, or spent your own money boosting this petition — thank you. You didn't have to do any of it. You did it anyway, for strangers, because you know this has to stop. That matters more than you know.

Let's keep going. For Jean, and for every patient still waiting to be believed.

In solidarity,

Amy