Below you will find a “rant” about the horrific world of health care in America. A friend of mine wrote it, and I really think her thoughts need to be shared. Not only so she can have a voice as an American citizen, but also because I think tons of you will agree with her and understand her plight. I have changed the names, but nothing else. These are her words and they must be heard…

Okay, I will keep this one relatively unedited and raw… but I just wanted to say, what is wrong with the state of healthcare and health insurance in this country?? We just found out, after having the most affordable and awesome insurance plan for the past three years… that come April 1st it is no more. It’s being replaced with a plan that is so unaffordable to us [to put our whole family on that is], it is almost laughable! I admit, I cried the first night I found out, tossed and turned the whole night… I was so upset. You see, we are right smack dab in the middle of a referral to OHSU’s Neurodevelopmental Clinic for baby girl—like they have just left me a message to get this thing rolling and now I have to call back and say nevermind, guess I’ll have to wait—we were just about to get Abira going at Healing Reins riding center as physical therapy, oh well, now I will have to find another way… which leads to another frustration. Why do people that either have money or great health insurance have access to the best of the best, to genetic testing and the whole bit?? How, I ask, does this make any sense for genetic research to move forward, especially in the case of autism and other pervasive developmental disorders?? I mean, how can we fix this fucked up system?? Excuse my swearing, but damnit… why are we the only one of 28 other “industrialized” nations that does not offer a national health care plan for it’s citizens…??

And WHY does our president live in some alter reality? I mean really, that guy is living in la la land. A tax credit for folks to purchase private health insurance is like putting a band aid on a wound that really needs stiches. Why does this president and other politicians so often try to find topical solutions to problems that are much, much deeper [for example like no child left behind…]? I really don’t think a tax credit is going to make that money actually appear in our budget, I really don’t… the president’s last tax cut put about $200 bucks in our pocket, woo-hoo, so I am not so hopeful [and why is the president cutting taxes endlessly anyway when we are spending billions of dollars on his war? and he never asks the american people to conserve anything, like in other wars of the past… no he thinks that we can just spend our way right out of this, go fill up your Ford Excursion I guess and demand low gas prices at the same time, I mean that is the American way, bigger is better, right, I mean our way is the right way and everyone else should be like us, we’re the best—sorry, another topic I guess].

I mean this new plan [which we are not going to “buy”] will have us pay over $5000 in premium plus a $1500+ deductable [per person? we aren’t sure about that at this point] before they will even cover one penny as a % of costs. So at the very least, we would pay $6500 dollars before anything is covered at all… plus the % of coverages have all changed, and our naturopathic coverage portion is now gone. The fact is that unless something bad happened, we would never even reach a point where we’d need to “use” the insurance % part… we just don’t go to the doctor that often. The numbers don’t even make sense. Not only do I not have $6500 in the first place, but it would be cheaper if I just payed for doctor and dentist visits out of my pocket… it would come to so much less that $6500, it isn’t even funny. So then I am left with the question, why even have the insurance at all? Just in case, people say… well, I am sorry, I can’t live my life that way. Go into debt, pulling money I don’t have out of my ass, just so I can rest assured that if anything bad happened I’d be covered [after I paid several thousand dollars that is]. That is letting the what ifs and fear rule your logical thinking over this… I will not live like that. Or worse yet, I could just go get a job… yes a job… as if what I have chosen to do right now is somehow less important than having health insurance. Maybe I am just being spoiled here, but I don’t think I or anyone should have to choose between health insurance and putting food on the table OR between health insurance and staying home with their kids if that is an important choice to them. So, say I get a job right now [and by the way, my husband already works 2 jobs so we can have this simple life], so I have to put Abira in daycare full time which can cost anywhere between $600 – $1000 per month for her to be somewhere I would feel good about, where she isn’t going to get sick all of the time, plus the $420 per month for our insurance, add to that miscellaneous costs of having a job [clothing, commuting?, etc.] plus all the actual bills we would be stuck with to actually make use of the insurance we have [because hypothetically Abira might actually get sick more], plus after school care for her older brother… you can see that the numbers make you want to say, is that even worth it?? NO, it isn’t!! Because any job that I could get right now, with my education and relative lack of experience [besides some part time gigs here and there, I have mostly been a stay at home mom] really wouldn’t pay much more than that… even if I did have my teaching credential [which would take 15 more months of school] and could get a teaching job, teachers don’t even make much more than that… and at what point is it worth being out of my childrens life for 50+ hours a week right now? You’d have to be making pretty damn good money to make these equations work and be worth it. It is hard to do, at least until both kids are in public school [and BTW thank g-d for the Boys & Girls Club].

Not to mention that letting the fear of not having insurance rule my decision making, would force me into a career path that certainly isn’t my first choice and would prevent me from doing what I really want… surprisingly enough and hopefully involving changing this system from the inside out, ironic huh?? But I am fired up about these issues right now. I have seen the desparity between the haves and the have nots with regards to this and other things, and I must do something about it. Things happen for a reason, where one door closes, another surely opens… in the very least it makes us feel not so attached to Deschutes, more willing to consider moving on, and feel less selfish about moving the fam somewhere new so I can go to medical school… in the mean time, I still have a handful of classes to take and I am thinking of applying for an international internship for pre med students in South Africa or India… where I am going to come up with the money for all of this? I have no idea at this point, but I surely think that it is a better thing to spend money on than this health insurance, more will end up coming from all of it in the long run, than settling for something mundane and “secure” in the present. Because, as I have learned in the past week, even the things you think are secure, you take for granted, can be gone from one day to the next.

Technorati Tags: america the beautiful, god bless america, health care issues, health care reform, op ed, random thought, read across america, universal health care

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