Why we need health care reform: a personal experience
August 22, 2009
When I was 13, my dad lost his job. He had been a lobbyist for the cities of the state of Colorado. We lived comfortably in a brand new house in a quiet bedroom community outside of Denver. On my thirteenth birthday was the day that he was fired.
Beginning on that day was the slow, humiliating fall of my family. Due to the nature of my dad’s illness, he never really understood that intellectually, he was not the genius that he used to be. He didn’t understand why people wouldn’t hire him with all of his experience. But everyone who knew him knew that he was just not the same person he had been.
I would hate to think what would have happened if we had not had family in Iowa. Once our bank accounts were dried up by medical bills after his insurance was gone we moved back to my grandmother’s farm house in Ogden, where we basically took over her life in the remaining years of her life. My uncle gave my dad a job in the tractor store which he could not do, but it allowed us to get by.
We soaked up all the inheritance that was coming to us just to try and live and get my dad the health care he needed. We garnered debt that made us the target of bill collectors from the city, state and nation. We went from upper middle class to white trash in the space of a couple of years.
I guess you would have to say that we were lucky. During those times it was a lot more difficult to get along. We had no COBRA. There was very little safety net, and that was just 30 years ago. But when I hear people complaining about the government becoming socialist, it pisses me off.
There is a level of care below which we should not fall. I am a capitalist, and I’ve started my own business. I’m hoping that it will be a success. But if it fails, and I lose all of my money, I’m afraid that I will end up on the streets begging for change, dying of some preventable disease. Right now I have insurance, and it’s pretty good insurance, but I’ve seen how easily it can be taken away. If I lose my ability to reason, like my father did, will anyone take care of me? It scares me to death.
Insurers are in business to make money, like we all are. But making money on other’s pain and suffering is immoral.
Please don’t let the the people peddling in fear and hatred ruin this opportunity to reform health care.
August 22, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Hi Adam,
Thanks for posting this. My father is currently experiencing the mess that is our current healthcare system. Dad and his wife cannot afford good insurance coverage: his wife’s employer, who used to have BC/BS, is in the middle of switching providers due to BC/BS’s increasing premiums by 50%. Even before the switch they could not afford comprehensive coverage: when my brothers were home, the family had a _$15,000_ deductible to afford a policy at all, and if anything catastrophic had happened I doubt they’d have been able to pay it off, they’d be bankrupt. So–years and years of no yearly checkups, regular preventive care, led to underlying, preventable health problems. A couple weeks ago Dad noticed he had some subtle motor control problems, and didn’t feel well–a friend took him to the emergency room and it was discovered that his blood pressure was sky-high. He required a CAT scan (there goes a big chunk of that deductible!) and it was discovered he’d had a minor stroke in the part of the brain that controls muscles, coordination, and speech. Luckily this was a minor stroke; due to the seriousness of his hypertension the emergency room doctor put him on medication, and Dad is now being monitored minimally to make sure things are balanced as well as they can be. Meanwhile, they are still dealing with BC/BS as Dad’s wife is waiting to find a new provider–they don’t know how they’re going to pay for the care he’s received. They were required to put a GP on the insurance form, but they didn’t have one, as they had not been going to the doctor over the years…they called around and although the response was lukewarm (one doc on vacation, the other one not accepting new patients, and the third “was assessing whether or not Mr. Wells was someone he wanted to take on–” [Translation: they want to see what kind of preexisting conditions he has, to make sure they're not going to lose too much money if they take him as a patient.] So here Dad is, unable to play guitar as he loves to do, feeling scared and financially strapped, because the insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations, and the medical community is set up to squeeze people like him right out of the system.
Can you tell I’m pissed off?
Right there with you.
Then now, there’s the pharmaceutical companies paying to perpetuate the myth that Obama’s proposed reforms are out to get the old folks, etc. –Utterly ridiculous…Rachel Maddow, as you know, hosted the executive of the AARP, I believe, who said that he has personally read the proposal and believes it would cure many of the problems we have with our current system.
Why are people not seeing through the smokescreen of fearmongering, coming from the very folks who want to perpetuate the current system? It’s GREED, people…they want your money and the corporations don’t give a damn if you’re sick. They really don’t.
*whew*
I need more coffee.
August 22, 2009 at 7:23 pm
You’re exactly right. That is a scary story, and there are millions more scary stories. I don’t understand how people get so scared of these phantom stories about death panels and losing choice when the truth is much, much scarier.
September 23, 2009 at 5:30 pm
“There is a level of care below which we should not fall.”
I couldn’t agree more. I’m an immigrant (yes, legal!) and, for me, the very definition of an “advanced” nation includes access to quality health care for the weakest and the most infirm amongst us. Democratic structures, systems, and processes; a sound functioning judicial system; a strong economy, etc. are all just “features” of an advanced nation. It is access to the benefits of all of these, i.e., access to justice, education, human rights etc. that truly define an “advanced” nation. Like education, I believe that access to health care is also one of the civil rights issues of our times!!