My health care coverage isn't working for me. Well, it's technically working for ME, but not for my whole family. Here's the deal. My husband isn't eligible for private health insurance. He has several "risk" factors that the private companies don't like. He's about 40 pounds overweight, he takes blood pressure meds, which keep his blood pressure controlled at a very normal number. Also, apparently at some point in the past (most likely after a car accident where he suffered a back injury) he took too much tylenol. There are liver numbers in his blood work that the insurance companies don't like. The kicker is that he's never been hospitalized a day in his life, he's barely ever sick - but based completely on possible future risk, he has been denied coverage time and time again. So, finally after the required number of rejections - he became eligible for our state's "high risk" pool coverage. State law says that the Pool must charge TWO TIMES the going rate for a private policy to insure that there is no competition... I'm sorry, that is insanity. It's horribly expensive. However, he's one of the lucky ones - we can now afford to pay through the nose just to have him covered. At least our entire financial future isn't any longer in jeopardy over something like a bad car wreck.
My struggle to find him some decent, affordable health coverage has lead me to have a completely different view of the current debate about how much government should be involved in health care than I had several years ago. I've heard all the scare arguments about the "socialist" European and Canadian systems, the long waits, the fight over what care you can get. I get that we have the best health care system in the world, the best doctors, the best nurses, the best everything... IF YOU HAVE INSURANCE! If you do not have insurance, you are in a worse place than anyone in any "socialist" country. If you don't have insurance and you get sick, you go to the public hospital (hope there's one near you) and wait 24 hours to see a doctor (That actually happened to an uninsured friend of mine recently here in Houston). You are told you can not have more than emergency treatment until you come back with cash in hand. You are denied diagnostics testing unless you pay up front. If you don't have the money, you get nothing. Don't kid yourself, that is happening to middle class people in the United States every day in every city.
Now I'm going to rant a little. I am so tired of all the rumors about the Democrats wanting to kill all the old and/or terminally ill people. In my experience the only people who try to scare the crap out of me are the ones who want to sell me something... think about it. Who do you think is behind all these internet horror stories?? Nine times out of ten it originates with the health insurance companies. I'm also tired of people who are retired and who are happily getting their healthcare through Medicare telling me I need to be so afraid of the bogeyman who is going to come in the night and pull the plug on my heart/lung machine if I get sick. So Medicare is good for the retired, because they deserve it but my husband in his 40's just needs to tough it out for the next 20+ years until he too becomes one of the deserving ones??
Something needs to be done about the current state of things. Our health care system is great if you can access it. But if you can't, it's very bad.
Now I know some of you are just frothing at the mouth to blast me about how I just don't know how bad it's going to be. Take your best shot - I already know how bad it IS.
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