Have y'all heard of Wendy the Coyote? This poor animal had been wandering around a Los Angeles neighborhood with an enormous growth on her face, drawing both concern and compassion from folks. Eventually, as most things do, her plight made it to Facebook, and animal lovers rallied to save her. (It is California, after all.) After weeks of collecting donations and scouring the area, an animal rescue organization finally caught her and promised to take good care of her.
Wendy the Coyote was euthanized.
It turns out the animal had been shot in the face with a pellet gun a while back, and the growth was an infection that simply could not be treated. Good intentions, poor outcome. My question is, was Wendy the Coyote's plight so horrible that she truly was better off with someone putting her out of her misery, or did the veterinarians simply run out of flowchart options?
Imagine the conversation in that clinic: they had something of a local celebrity on their table with a lot of people expecting a positive outcome and, well, the X-rays don't lie — this animal, while still living, could not be cured of her wounds. Could they try medicines? What about surgery? Maybe some off-the-wall idea that could give her a little more time? But she's a wild animal, and they have other things to do, like see patients who can pay their bills. It's a tough spot for them, no doubt.
One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the time to collect the dead bodies rolls around, and there are public calls to "bring out your dead!" A young man with an older man over his shoulder comes out in an effort to drop the body on the cart, except the old man is very much alive! He claims he is feeling better and might even go for a walk in the sunshine, but the young man won't have it. Convinced the man will expire soon, he negotiates with the cart operator to save them both some trouble and take the man anyway. All of this while a woman is beating a rug with a cat. They don't make movies like that anymore.
I'm sure the veterinarians are upstanding and ethical professionals, but the fate of Wendy the Coyote does remind me of Sarah Palin's "death panels" claim back in 2009. Most of us are old enough to remember that, right? In case you need a refresher, Palin was claiming that Obamacare would establish a board of bureaucrats who would decide who did and did not get care. Just like the folks taking care of Wendy the Coyote, human healthcare professionals have to prioritize cases, too — and the hospitals usually put the ones who can pay at the top of the list.
Author's Note: I'm about to reference my dad as a surgeon, but he is also an author with a series of novels all about the struggles between hospitals making money and doctors providing the care they know the patient needs. It's fiction but hits close to home, and no, I don't make a commission off of it, but maybe I should? Just kidding, Daddio!
At the time, my dad was still a practicing surgeon and used a different metaphor to reach the same conclusion. He said to imagine taking your beloved dog to the vet because you found a lump under his jaw. The vet runs the tests as your bill climbs higher and higher, and then it is determined that your dog has cancer; his chances of survival depend on you: surgery, chemotherapy, and support medications to keep him comfortable. Suddenly, you're looking at $10,000 for a chance at giving your doggo another year or two, or $200 to let him down nice and easy without pain.
Compare that to an insurance company receiving a request from a 77-year old patient just diagnosed with lung cancer. Tests, surgeries, chemotherapy, palliative care, and the bill goes higher and higher. The difference between you and the insurance bureaucrat is you love your dog — they don't know or care about you. You would actually struggle over the choice; insurance will not.
For decades, we have seen life-saving medicine prices skyrocket and become unattainable for many. Keytruda, for example, finds and destroys cancer cells directly using the body's natural immune response and costs each U.S. patient roughly $208,000 per year. Multiply that by millions. Merck, the company that makes Keytruda, has made approximately $97.8 billion in U.S. sales alone, most of it paid by insurance companies (and we all know who pays the insurance companies).
Consider lesser-known treatment options. While an insurance company will never blatantly say a treatment is denied because it costs too much, they will leave drugs off the list of approved options, label something as "experimental" or "not medically necessary," or force the patient to undergo other more cost-effective, usually older and less efficacious treatments before asking them to reapply.
According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists report from earlier this year,
Now approved in the U.S. to treat 19 types of tumors, including of the skin, lung, breast and colon, [Keytruda] has become a lifeline for millions, turning previously terminal forms of advanced cancer into manageable diseases and increasing survival rates for others with cancers that are hard to treat — sometimes for months, sometimes for years.
It's all a word game. The animal rescue is saying they'd get her the care she needs; the candidate is saying you can keep your doctor if you'd like, but, in the end, it comes down to what makes the most sense. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device manufacturers are all in the business of doing business.
For this reason, every time I see an ad for a hospital begging you to believe they care about you and will give you whatever you need to live your best life, I laugh because if you were to walk in without insurance, I know without a doubt they'd send a social worker in to enroll you in Medicaid so they could be guaranteed reimbursement or at least a tax write-off. Healthcare didn't become the largest sector of our economy at 18% of GDP with charity cases, y'all.
And maybe that's why the whole exchange has become so impersonal. A coyote receiving more outrage over being put down than a college student who died as a result of an asthma attack because he couldn't afford his now-$500 inhaler only makes sense when you take away the awareness that the young man was someone's son, best friend, brother, or hero.
But we've seen this song and dance from the Left before, wailing over the delta smelt fish while farmers suffer, the gnashing of teeth over cutting down trees while gleefully celebrating babies being killed in the womb. Just take a gander at these two posts from the Los Angeles Times only 13 days apart:
Shooting of beloved Studio City coyote 'Wendy' sparks hunt for justice https://t.co/CYaKXvapeN
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 10, 2026
“I don’t think demanding that women and girls be safe and have ownership over their own bodies is a radical idea,” Rodrigo told The Times.
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) August 28, 2026
Read more: https://t.co/MVJswqB0mc pic.twitter.com/BJnOBvQVza
Let's be honest with ourselves for a second: no one on the Left sees this as hypocrisy, and there is nothing we can do to change their minds. But this is why we gather here on The Front Porch, to talk about what's what in our lives. Out here in the sticks of eastern North Carolina, I just haven't been able to shake the lunacy of crying over a coyote and not human life. Make it make sense, y'all. I'll see you in the comments!
