I was trying to keep mum on this subject. But I cannot. So I am going to repeat some things that I have said before, as recently as roughly two months ago, nauseated by the fact that I need to do so. And concerned that I will likely need to do so again, and again, and again.
Health care should not be fodder for political games. It is playing politics with lives. Period. And the fact that the GOP is knowingly playing politics as they count down to September 30th makes this more egregious than the usual egregious machinations we’ve come to expect from Congress.
Must politics be involved in our health care? Yes, because the government is already involved. And I believe the government should be involved. For those who believe the government should not be involved, that is a whole other discussion — philosophical and practical.
That said, whatever side of the so-called “aisle” you belong on, or if you don’t consider yourself to be on either side, can you justify a collection of predominantly rich, white men making decisions about your ability to visit a doctor, to pay for routine blood work, an epi-pen, or treatment for your child’s, your grandchild’s or your own pre-existing condition?
Don’t we all have pre-existing conditions, or will — eventually?
Do we live in a single country or 50 nation states? I, personally, have already uprooted my life once, last year, in large part in order to have a prayer of a few more physical therapy sessions per calendar year, and potentially better health care in general. That PT? It was to take care of injuries that could have been addressed years ago if not for our shitty health care system — and incidentally, that dates back to before the ACA went into effect.
Must I really go in search of another state to live in — again?
I’d rather not. Can you blame me?
Are there reasons for state-specific differences in health care access, delivery, and cost? Of course. But that doesn’t mean that we should be “sweetening the pot” in order to acquire a yes vote on a piece of shoddy legislation.
Listen, we all know there are many problems with our current health care system, just as there were many problems prior to the Affordable Care Act. However, the bullshit going on in Congress right now is unconscionable. It is pure game playing. When even congressional Republicans say there is nothing good about the latest attempt at a bill — which, incidentally, they were tweaking late last night in order to get specific Republican “no” votes to turn into yes — isn’t that a clue that this is pure politics and we ought to all say enough?
Work was being done on a bipartisan basis to make fixes to the existing, highly complex set of regulations comprising the ACA. Isn’t that what responsible representatives do? Shouldn’t we be railing at trying to ram through this pitiful excuse for legislation — affecting tens of millions of us — under Budget Reconciliation?
So I repeat what I wrote on June 27th of this year, sickened of this unrelenting stress — wondering if the small bit of health care I’m able to access thanks to the ACA and its subsidies is going to disappear entirely at the hands of obtuse, privileged, bloodless men.
Health Care Hazards Ahead…
ACA. AHCA. So-called Better Care. Are you paying attention to proposed health care and health insurance changes ahead? Are you stymied by this discussion, feeling like real people are lost in the mix, bound to pay a terrible price… one way or another?
I recently decided to estimate my health care expenditures of the past 10 years. I included insurance premiums, co-pays, out-of-pocket payments, prescriptions, and services simply not covered. This is a rough estimate, mind you, but the total as a percentage of my net income ranges from approximately 25% to 200%.
That was just for me.
Yes, you read that correctly. After my divorce, being an older mother and responsible for two young children, I was afraid to be without some kind of health insurance. And given a few instances — one emergency in particular — good thing I had paid to remain insured.
Now, to be clear, those estimates span pre-Obama years and bring us up to the present, and 200% was during a pre-ACA enrollment year. That 25% to 200% of income price tag also explains, in part, the enormous debt I accrued during “bad years” post-divorce. Likewise, the liquidation of savings and other assets for which I worked throughout my life as I hit 50 years of age and my age-based premiums skyrocketed.
Little has changed for me in the past decade except that I’m more worn down, more cynical, more afraid.
And in more pain.
For those who like to blame the victim (and their lifestyle choices), my health obstacles over the years have largely been due to injuries, ensuing misdiagnoses, and subsequent absence of treatment or insufficient treatment. These last two, a matter of insurance restrictions and money.
So where are the real solutions? After expending big bucks — tens of thousands of dollars over a decade — why am I still living with chronic pain that has a straightforward path to improvement?
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I’m upset this morning, this week, this month, this year. I’m frustrated by what I see happening in this country. I’m frustrated by mobility issues that have solutions I can’t access. I’m frustrated by my own increasing inability to calmly contemplate the topic of health care, much less to write about it dispassionately.
Health care is personal. So say the pundits. I agree. I’m sure you agree, too. So I’m getting personal and talking about things I generally don’t. I’m doing so without worrying too much about the words I choose, knowing that my political leanings aren’t something I hide. But the health care — not health insurance — of 300+ million people shouldn’t be about politics. Nor should it be left to 50 smaller “nation states,” especially when mobility is a must in order to find work.
And don’t even get me started on the cost of common prescriptions, and insurance providers’ capacity to simply leave them off a “covered“ list.
We are, in theory, one nation. And if ever there ought to be a non-partisan conversation, this is it. And by the way, those who make the argument that health care “consumers” should shop around for health services on the “free market” have obviously never been low income or broke, much less truly ill or incapacitated. And when was the last time a victim of stroke or heart attack could hop online and then make a few phone calls? What about the parent of a child with ongoing medical needs since birth?
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Politics. Health care politics. Party lines. Uh-huh. This entire process stinks. My health care options have been lousy since long before the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), and for me, they improved in some key ways with the ACA, thanks to nixing the constraints of pre-existing conditions. But the costs have been prohibitive for me as an individual both before and since. Less so since, to date, because subsidies have helped a small amount. And as an independent with variable income and periods of time with no income — like millions of workers in this country — tax credits would be of little use.
Moreover, as one in the 55 to 64 age bracket (there are some 41 million of us in that group), and like too many others, I am witnessing opportunities dry up, and with them my income. The situation grows more dire each year, not coincidentally as premiums and deductibles climb… by age.
How many of us just hope we can somehow hang on until we hit 65 and can enroll in Medicare?
Something has to be done. Many things have to be done. I don’t care what you name the legislation — or the many pieces of legislation to deal with moving parts. I don’t care who it’s nicknamed after. I don’t care who takes credit or what your political affiliation is. But a country in which your health is dependent on genetic good fortune, no accidents, and wealth — including in order to avail yourself of critical preventive services, “essential benefits,” or early treatment measures — is ridiculous.
We don’t choose our genetic fortunes — healthy or unhealthy. We don’t choose to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and undergo injuries in car accidents. We don’t choose to be laid off and see our livelihoods reduced by advancements — yes, I say advancements, because to “go back” to some fictitious “better time” is utter foolishness. Technology advancements and globalization are facts. Likewise, demographics. Most of us work hard; we may have relatively few choices as to where we work, especially as we age, and no option but to work for an “employer” or series of organizations who pay us for work through which we have zero ability to get health insurance.
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Issues of coverage content and limitations must be addressed. We all have pre-existing conditions eventually; some are born with them, others may be acquired through routine “living” of our lives, and to hand over the ability to make potentially damning decisions about who will and won’t receive care to politicians, much less individual states, particularly when conditions worsen without it (ultimately costing more), seems illogical.
In the coverage discussion, let’s not forget the counterproductive constraints imposed by insurance companies via lifetime caps, or equally obvious foolishness in the form of “this many visits per calendar year” but not to worry… there’s always the dispensing of painkillers, regardless of whether or not the underlying cause is addressed.
Yes, I’ll speak from experience. I’ve been the victim of this one for a number of years now. Common but painful and limiting conditions, readily addressable through physical therapy, have been extended rather than resolved. I’ve been cut off because of timing in terms of injuries, pain, and the calendar year. This resulted in reduced or halted treatment, a continuation of pain, and by the time I’m allowed to “return” to treatment the following January, the underlying situation is generally worse.
The alternatives I was offered? The very sort of pain prescriptions that we hear so much about these days. Right. Our ongoing opioid crisis.
I refused the pain meds. I managed on Advil, heating pads, cranking away (and cranky) — sitting behind my laptop from a home workspace, doing the best I could with good days and bad. Looking back, I believe refusing potentially addictive meds was the right decision. But I also see the progress that was made when I was allowed treatment — light at the end of the tunnel! — and the unnecessarily wasted months and years in pain when I wasn’t, as my life seemed to shut back down.
One of the reasons I uprooted and relocated last fall was in the hope of accessing slightly more covered medical treatment in a “bluer” (different) state. How crazy is that? I was literally online trying to discern where I might have a shot at even 10 more PT sessions in a calendar year. To quote our commander-in-chief… Sad!
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Let’s look at another vital issue that the current Senate bill isn’t addressing though it’s surely the elephant in the room — the cost of drugs. Big Pharma is making money hand over foot, and that’s a factor in rising premiums. Then there are the decisions as to those prescriptions that insurance will not cover — who knows why — as Big Pharma jacks up the prices, and if we wish to continue with our meds, we’re paying outlandish amounts out of pocket.
Hello… Epi-Pens?
Surely, you’ve read the reports of ongoing Epi-Pen price gouging:
Though this simple medical device contains only about $1 of the drug epinephrine, the company that sells it, Mylan, earned the public’s enmity and lawmakers’ scrutiny after ratcheting up prices to $609 a box.
Shall we add this report’s mention of Medicaid fraud of more than $1 billion from the same pharmaceutical company? And what about this?
The company [Mylan] has an effective monopoly on a lifesaving product, which has allowed its leaders to see public outrage as a tax they must pay, and then move on.
Mylan has been called out again and again over the years — by the company’s own employees, regulators, patients, politicians and the press — and hasn’t changed, even as revenue has skyrocketed, hitting $11 billion last year.
Who’s dealing with this issue in the proposed legislation?
Now about those premium prices and high deductibles…
Of course the steep rise of premiums, deductibles, and co-pays is untenable! Of course we have to do something!
That brings us back to pricing, and yes, to other elements of health care delivery that put undue strain on the system.
Let’s not forget the sort of malpractice insurance that physicians must carry in our litigious society. Let’s not forget the sky-high costs of becoming a physician. Let’s not forget that the ACA has imposed serious financial hardship on small businesses. This is something of which I wasn’t fully aware until about a year ago. There’s no question that this is a troubling issue. And we know there are more. I haven’t addressed Medicaid. I haven’t yet said what I suspect is true: Like millions of others once firmly ensconced in the “middle class” as a full-time working person, I can see the time when I will have exhausted every financial resource and my old age will be spent on Medicaid.
If Medicaid still exists in the state, geographically speaking, where I wind up.
Not a happy prospect.
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My kids? And their kids, if they have them some day?
My boys are in their early twenties now and healthy. But what happens if one of them is in an accident? What happens if one of them falls ill — even to something manageable — but pre-existing conditions returns as law of the land, or rather, law of the state they’re in? What if they are, like me, working as independents? What about the fact that tens of millions of us in the US, roughly 20 to 30% of the workforce, have no “employer relationship,” not necessarily by choice? If sick or injured, there is no shared health insurance cost, no short term or long term disability, and no money coming in if unable to work.
What happens when our twenty-somethings are saddled with medical bills they can’t possibly pay?
I haven’t mentioned the mind-numbing complexity and cost impacts of the medical coding industry.
I haven’t mentioned the poor, the chronically ill, the aging in nursing homes. Their dependence on Medicaid.
I haven’t mentioned the diseases in which there is far too little “approved” coverage, diseases like Lyme that can devastate a family.
I haven’t mentioned the millions of women who use the services of Planned Parenthood, their funding on the chopping block again, as women’s health remains the moralistic purview of middle-aged white men.
I return to this: Accessing functioning health care should not require that we go bankrupt or even close. Accessing functioning health care should have as its goal to get us better — not just pay insurance companies in this calendar year, along with facilities, pharmaceutical companies, and service providers — with more profits to come. Accessing functioning health care should not be a matter of genetic good fortune, good luck in general, or a fat wallet.
Fuck politics. We just want decent lives. A shot at a decent life. We don’t care which party puts the plans and organizational fixes in place to enable us to have that shot. And while it’s all well and good to engage in philosophical discussion on the role of federal versus state government, real people in the real world are either helped or not by addressing core problems in our health care systems.
We’ve become talking points, dollar figures, stats in a CBO score. Yet all we want, as individuals, as mothers and fathers, as siblings and spouses, is a chance to do what is routine in other western industrialized societies — see a doctor when we’re sick or hurt, know that our loved ones can see a doctor when they’re sick or hurt. We want to get better, get back to our lives. And that ought to exist regardless of employer relationship and without putting undue strain on small businesses.
It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask. I’d like to think it isn’t. But I fear the worst, though I’m trying not to. Even writing this much, saying this much, I can feel my blood pressure shoot up.
I will stop momentarily, turn to more pleasant subjects, attempt to push back the fear and frustration that is now quite literally housed in my body. How many others are living with this kind of uncertainty and anxiety?
Regardless of what happens in the Senate this week, I can’t help but worry. What is being proposed — what we know of it — is a mess. What we have now is in need of serious repair. The sword hangs overhead for millions of us.
Yes, our reasons may be different, but the staggering human and financial cost ought to justify a more measured, mature, and apolitical approach to such a complex set of challenges.
No matter where you stand politically, how you envision yourself being harmed or helped by this pending bill, rushing the process is callow and unconscionable. Likewise, not addressing underlying issues is like putting a band-aid on a large, festering wound. Untended, the infection spreads. Yes, yes, I know. It’s about money, money in politics, power. But people can be so kind to each other. You know that. I know that. You’ve lived it. I’ve lived it. When we see a stranger who is hurt or in need, we don’t stop and ask what their political party is before rushing to their aid, do we?
Of course not. And that’s what we need to tap into. The fact that we do help each other, that Americans at heart do care about their neighbors, that we do, most of us, truly want to live in compassionate community. These are the beliefs I cling to, naively perhaps, but in the hope that we will deal with the issues in earnest. If not soon enough to help people like me, at least to pave the way for our children and grandchildren.
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It’s an insane system. People who are healthy now have a grudge against paying for those who need health care. They argue they shouldn’t be forced to have insurance. People who need health care are judged, like drivers, on their cost to insurers. However, anybody can choose to be a safe driver; we can’t always choose to be healthy. We can do lots of things, like eating right and exercising, but there’s no guarantee we won’t get cancer anyway or catch something or have an accident.
In France, we pay–it’s a tax, really, there’s no choice–based on income, not health risk. Which seems only right. The government (with our taxes) covers most of the cost of med school, so doctors don’t start out with huge debts. Doctors make more money than most people, but not nearly to the degree in the U.S. The government sets the prices. The medical sector makes money but not the fortunes to be had in the U.S. Hospitals are utilitarian, not hotels with nurses, so of course they’re cheaper.
France does have a have a pretty good system and most costs are paid. You can buy supplemental private insurance for things not paid. What is really crazy for Americans is that 100% is paid for long term ailments and I never waited long for medical service when I lived in Aix nor family who lived in Paris.
I believe I’ve not read a more impassioned post than yours on this topic! And with good reason. I, too, am sick of politics and the way both sides try and maneuver and sidestep issues to advance their own agendas. Health care is broken and has been for a long, long time. With Entrepreneur’s cancer, we are watching to see what happens. As of how, oral chemo is not really covered under the drug plan one needs to buy when moving to Medicare. Oh, it is….to the tune of about $1800 a month! And then there’s the “gap” where no assistance is offered. What’s up with that?! Our private insurance pays most of it now, but there will be a time when he needs to move off of that to Medicare. His condition puts us in a very scary place. I don’t know what the answer is. Perhaps they could start with putting medical professionals, insurance representatives and the common Joe in a room together to hash it out….leave the politicians out of the meeting. Maybe we’d get something that actually works. I’m afraid there isn’t a solution that will be beneficial to everyone, and that is very sad. I’m with you on the fact that they should not pass this based on partisan politics. I always wish you all the best and hope you can find the strength needed to make it. You’re an amazing fighter! xoxox
I’m with you, girl. I’m with yo u.
I agree. It is a gong show. What is mind boggling is the “why should healthy people pay for sick people”. – er ……because that is what insurance does and spreads the risk. When I hear people say this and no one challenges them I just realize how screwed up it is. I was offered a job back in the US for a health care chain. I cannot do that again. Funny that a new Populist leader does not address this and in fact does the opposite.