I’m feeling particularly sad lately. Sad and exhausted. Not just physically, but emotionally too. There is so much anger everywhere. Everyone is angry at someone or something and I just can’t take it anymore. Which is strange, because I’m generally very good with anger. I’m considering disappearing for a long, long while.
I can’t watch television or read online, because all I see are people protesting healthcare reform. I see people carrying fucking assault rifles at protest rallies where the president is going to speak. I hear about fucking death panels that don’t exist anywhere but in fucking private insurance companies. As if an insurance company doesn’t already stand between you and the care you need. As if those companies are perfectly free to deny coverage for chemo or transplants or drugs that aren’t on their fucking formulary. As if they can’t legally dump you just because you had the nerve to use your policy.
Here’s the thing — we can’t fire our insurance companies. In theory, we could. In theory, we could all go out and get private coverage that we pay for on our own. Unless we have a pre-existing condition. Unless we happen to be beyond the acceptable BMI measurements. Unless we have a family history of high blood pressure or cancer or heart problems or anything really, even if we currently are perfectly healthy. Unless we happen to be a smoker. Unless we happen to have had a serious illness in the past, even if that illness is completely cured now. Unless the fucking insurance company didn’t like the color of our goddamn eyes. And if we do manage, somehow, to get a policy? The cost is insane. In order to actually afford coverage, you have to accept deductibles that are so high, you may as well not have any insurance at all. $5,000 deductible? Are you kidding me? That’s fucking insane.
So, MOST of us can’t fire our insurance company and hire another one. So what do we do? We’re stuck at jobs that barely pay enough to cover the bills, but we can’t move on to something better because we’d lose our health insurance. And we can’t risk that, not when we have diabetes or high blood pressure or chronic pain or any reoccurring health issue. We can’t risk that if we have children who could get sick at any moment.
A government sponsored public option? That’s a great idea, because we fucking CAN fire the politicians that put it together if we don’t like what they’re doing. We CAN exercise some degree of control of over what gets into the option, by virtue of electing people that will honestly represent us. Sure, a lot of politicians are creepy and crooked. So we vote them out. We fire them and we hire someone new. And we keep firing and hiring until they get the damned message and do what we want.
Plus, a government option will force private insurance to be fucking competitive for once. I don’t want private insurance to go out of business. I want them to REFORM and actually COVER THEIR CLIENTS when they get sick. If I buy a private policy (and I probably would, even with a public option available, as would most people who could afford it. Because a private policy pushes you to the front of the line and we all want that.)I’m going to buy one that actually delivers on what it says it will. That won’t cancel me because I get sick and need to use it. Who won’t deny me necessary surgeries or therapies. And why will they be competitive? Because the fucking Public Option will force them to compete. It will force them to work for their clients, it will force them to offer coverage beyond what people could get for free. It would force them to fucking insure people, not just take their money, deny their claims and then drop them.
I know a lot of people are worried that all their taxes will be taken and given to people who ‘don’t work or nothing’, but I say: this benefits you too. Yes, you have your private insurance. Yes, you have your savings and you’ve done everything you’re supposed to do to have a nice, safe, stable life and family. That’s great, it really is and I’m happy for you. But all that won’t protect you from a serious car accident or a cancer diagnosis or heart attack or drug resistant infection. It just won’t. And that private insurance you have? It has the right to drop you, cold turkey. It has the right to refuse to pay any claim. It has the right to insist that bone marrow transplants are experimental medicine and not the tested treatment they actually are. And even if your insurance pays all the claims, doesn’t drop you and doesn’t increase your premiums, you still have to pay the 10 or 20 or 30 percent of the bill that’s your responsibility. Depending on how badly you’re injured or how bad your diagnosis, that amount can wreck you. It can wreck you despite all your savings, despite all your private insurance, despite all the right things you’ve done. And you shouldn’t have lose everything just because you got sick. You shouldn’t have to mortgage your home or raid your kid’s college fund because some idiot drunk driver hit you and put you in the hospital for a month. You shouldn’t have to file bankruptcy and ruin your credit because you were unlucky. No one thinks it can happen to them, but half of the bankruptcies file in this country are due to medical expenses. No one should have to lose everything they’ve worked their whole lives for because their insurance company bails on them or the coverage they could afford just wasn’t enough.
I won’t say that some people won’t abuse the system. I’m not idealistic or naive. I realize that there are people in our country that do, genuinely, do nothing and just ride along on the government train. So what? So what if a few people get one over on the government? There are nearly 50 million people in our country with no fucking healthcare at all. There are millions of children who can’t see the doctor when they get an ear infection. There are millions of women who can’t get prenatal care. There are millions of people who can’t see a doctor, so they go to work sick and infect their coworkers. That does not have to be the case. No child has to die from an untreated tooth infection. Our emergency rooms do not have to be overwhelmed with minor health problems when they should be focusing on genuine emergencies. And no one has to die on the emergency room floor from an illness that could have been treated and cured, if only they had been able to afford to go see a fucking doctor when they initially got sick.
