An Open Letter to Tatiana Schlossberg
Dear Ms. Schlossberg,
I read with great sorrow your New Yorker piece about your diagnosis and the maybe year you have left. About the medications that might buy you more time, if you can afford them, if your insurance approves them, if the system deems you worthy of another sunrise.
I’m a stranger, but I’m writing anyway. Not because I can fix what’s broken in your body. But because you’ve spent your career documenting what’s broken in our systems, and I think you’d like to know it can be changed. I have the math, and the application, live and working, to prove it.
Not My Problem
This isn’t about my business. This is about 1 in 5 Americans who use insulin playing Russian roulette every month by rationing doses because of cost. And such. About the system designed to extract maximum profit from maximum desperation as a business model. Medical crowdfunding by itself is a zero sum game made necessary by unacceptable, abhorrent practices that must be changed, or just replaced. A modern Les Misérables - even this very morning I read that even more foxes are in charge of even more henhouses. And with Christmas coming, what will Grandma spend her prescription money on?
What We Built
One of our seven initiatives is LifeLine Medications — a non-profit structure dedicated to making affordable medications accessible through direct community coordination. Community demand pooling. Direct manufacturing relationships. Transparent pricing. Workers paid in ownership stakes, so their incentive is to help more people, not deny more claims.
This isn’t a nonprofit begging for donations. This isn’t a startup promising to “disrupt healthcare.” This is mutual aid with infrastructure.
What I’m Asking
You’ve spent your career documenting broken systems. And unfortunately, you’re now very familiar with this one.
So here’s my actual ask: Will you run it? Or give it to someone who can do it better than me?
I’m willing to hand over the entire project to someone YOU trust to do it well.
I don’t know the name of a single pharmaceutical representative to ask, or to avoid. But you do. Or someone in your orbit does. Your article reached me and what we need is people, to be reached. Even two hours of your time might be enough to save generations; including this one. That sounds rude and audacious to me even writing it, to ask you for anything at all. But you wrote that article for a reason. And I think this might be an answer to that reason.
If you have ever seen African army ants cross a river, it’s an inspiring spectacle. They link together and BECOME the bridge. Pretend this is a seed.
Full details on the economics: the2ndsecond.com
With Utmost Respect,
One army worker ant,
Denken Founding Manager, Liana Banyan Corporation November 2025
P.S. — I’m not trying to be Valjean, I’m trying to be the Bishop. One of many.