Health Care and I......

There is so much going on about HCR, lots of celebrating, but a whole lot of meaness too. Through this whole process I have been unable to understand the meanness, and hope that it is mis-understanding and not a genuine dislike of everyone else. Of course, I know that a lot of the "anti" stuff is plain misinformation, put out in a way to frighten people and cause them to react against anything different.
I have experienced the lack of insurance, even when paying premiums, and found it to be devastating. We lost everything, all of our savings, anything that could be sold, we came home to a borrowed house with our clothes and a few pieces of furniture, mostly for the baby - everything fit in a pickup and small trailer.
We had the advantage of a family who supported us, and were able to help with very basics, like childcare for Dr. appointments. We were also blessed with understanding AFDC counselors who transferred us from state-to-state and kept us from stupid mistakes that would have lost what little coverage we were able to get. And, while the medical coverage was good, living on $352 per month, with an additional $150 in food stamps, was beyond challenging.
The worst parts were the little, minor, humiliations - the lady at the gift store who wouldn't take a check because we were on welfare, the "Christian" ladies at the church who wouldn't give out cheese and milk subsidies unless they approved of your lifestyle (in a very small town, if you go out to the tavern.....), the salesman who took our car in trade, but gave us no credit for it, because we were over a barrel; yes, I do know that isn't the way it's supposed to be, but this is a life that a lot of people face every single day.
The biggest cause of bankruptcy in this country is medical expenses. More people lose their homes because they, or a family member, got sick or they lost their job and whatever health insurance that came with it. People literally in the streets because of illness, or unemployment, or even/often both.
I heard someone today talk about how in Russia and Sweden if a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer she is sent home to die, and Americans are stupid and try to heal everyone. Now, it was a guy, and I was tempted to just judge him and let it go, and I was also tempted to jump up and tell him he's stupid, but both approaches strike me as pretty unenlightend or very outside my public persona 's comfort zone. And, even though they said it on FOX, it isn't true.
For all the stories, there are so many benefits to knowing you can go to hospital and get treated, no matter what. Yes, I heard about the long waits and prioritized treatment in Canada, but my family tells me otherwise. Treatment may not be availble in every medical center, but it is available. If you need a hospital bed or convalescent center, they don't send you home after 3 days because that's the protocol covered by your insurance, you stay until you are well.
My friend's daughter, studying in England on a student visa, not even a citizen, ended up in the hospital for weeks. She was so sick her folks flew over and racked up a pretty good hotel bill while she recovered over 3 weeks, and were stunned when there was no bill, none, because that's how they operate.
That's a wonderful thing about Australia too, my friends there don't complain that they can get treatment when they need it, nor do my cousins in New Zealand.
Of course, there are penalties for taking care of each other in this fashion, most of these countries have higher taxes. They don't just cover health care though, they also pay for schools (imagine no levies for operating expenses), roads, libraries, police and fire protection, and all of the rest of those civilized things that people need.
For me, it comes down to being responsible for each other. It is a tenet of every major religion to take care of the least in society, it is the basis of our humanity. For every child or grandmother or veteran who is on the street, riding buses to keep warm, staying awake all night because it isn't safe to sleep, finding a sense of betterment living in a car instead of living in a box, I am less than I could be, because at the very bottom of it all, we are all one.

Health Care for Everyone

Fran asked today, "if you could enact one bit of social reform, what would it be?"

For me, today, it's health care. Single payer, medicare for all or whatever you want to call it. I want full blown equal access for everyone to medical treatment and no overpaid manager who has no medical degree deciding who gets what treatment based on the shareholders report of dividends.

Yes, I come from Canada, so I know what guaranteed coverage means, and it is not the travesty that the health care industry here would have people believe. So much so that the big insurance companies currently have law suits going in several provinces to force them to offer to all Canadians the kind of "care" we have here. The Canadian system works, and big health care is trying to break it like ours. It isn't because they want to provide for the people who need treatment, since under the Canadian system everyone gets treated, it's so they can get a cut like they do here, so they can insert themselves between the person and the health care provider. Well over half of what we pay for health care goes to the insurance companies and their huge corporate machine, not to the medical providers.

Up until the current economic crisis, most personal bankruptcy in this country was because of medical costs, it may still be. None of my Canadian family and friends face losing their homes to cover medical costs. For that matter, none of them have to stay in a particular job to keep medical benefits, their single payer coverage is the ultimate in portable.

There are so many egregious examples of people who have their insurance denied or coverage dropped because of their illness going on too long or being too costly. Just Google insurance coverage denied or something like that and you'll get over 2 million hits.

I just know, as the parent of two young people who don't have coverage, and senior parents on a fixed income, life is very difficult out there for a lot of folks. Not getting prescriptions filled because of costs, not using the emergency room because the co-pay is too high, waiting to go to the Dr until after the last visit is paid off, even if really ill, etc. And, the one child just got a raise, (.08/hour) so is now no longer eligible for the assistance program he had used that allowed a graduated scale of payments.

I have excellent health insurance, and we have used it quite a bit over the years, since my husband has managed to experience a wide variety of medical conditions. It has been a blessing, and has necessitated my staying in a job that where for several years conditions were so miserable that if it weren't for the medical coverage I'd have been long gone. But, we had already discovered what happened without coverage.

Himself became ill when we were living in the mid-west, I had been paying premiums, but the coverage mysteriously disappeared when his pneumonia became something much more serious. He was in a "charity" ward in the hospital for 17 days, 3 beds in a 2 bed room, no visitors, and never received proper treatment. Rather than pursue what he really had, his Doctor put him on a drug for something he knew he didn't have as part of a trial. Needless to say himself got sicker and sicker and we finally gave up the "good" life of welfare care and moved home.
He was on Medicaid here when we first got back, but here he got the treatment he needed, including surgery to remove half of one lung and a huge growth (non-cancerous). It was many years before there was a definitive diagnosis of what he had, but he got life saving surgery under government health care in Washington. (Which also says to me that leaving health care management to individual states is folly, or everyone will move to the states with good coverage).

We had another opportunity to experience medical treatment without insurance when the second child was born. I was working s a consultant and had no benefits - the "If-you-don't-work-you-don't get-paid" style. We prepaid as much as we could, but it took almost a year to pay of everything and that was for a well child and a short hospital stay. (I knew I should have done it at home).

So, I pass on the request: if you could enact one bit of social reform, what would it be?