Do you have health insurance? Do you think you’re protected? You aren’t – take it from someone who knows. I was aware the system in this country was bad, but I had no idea how awful it was until I got trapped in Healthcare Hell.
(In case you missed how I got involved, see The Winter of Our Discontent.)
For starters, we lost $50,000 a year income when my wife, an RN, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. So now, somehow, out of our meager savings and my Social Security check of $1100 a month (after paying into the system for 50 years and after my Medicare deduction), we must find a way to pay for absolute necessities like food, mortgage, utilities, property taxes, and still somehow find money for trips to Knoxville (sixty miles away) for chemo and other medical treatments.
In addition, we must find some way to pay the $200 monthly premium for health insurance through her group plan at work. That $200 a month is actually a blessing, but she can only remain on it for 12 weeks. After that, we must find the money to pick up the COBRA premiums – which will surely be considerably higher. How much higher, we don't know yet.
But the COBRA premiums can only be extended for 18 months (so I’m told), after which we will have to try to find private health insurance. Just a few months ago, it would have been impossible to find such insurance. But even though that’s now technically possible – thanks to Obamacare – as a practical matter, it’s still an impossibility, since we won't be able to afford the astronomical premiums.
• • •
Pundits and politicians rant that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are havens for indolent cheats. That’s a bald-faced lie. The truth is benefits from these programs are very hard to come by, and they are best described as miserly. If you doubt that, let me educate you.
My $1100-a-month Social Security check disqualifies us for programs like SSI and Medicaid. That’s right, income of $11oo a month is too high to qualify for these “poverty” programs.
Since my wife has terminal lung cancer, she has applied for SS disability, but her application must be approved, and that is a lengthy process – especially if the people at Social Security have even the slightest suspicion you might be trying to game the system.
Even though approval in her case is a foregone conclusion (we hope), it still takes six months after approval before we will begin to receive a monthly payment of approximately $1300. Keep in mind, she paid into the system for forty years.
Despite having a terminal illness, it will be another 24 months after disability payments begin before she's eligible for Medicare. That’s right – a total of 30 months before she can benefit from a system she paid into for forty years.
And the sad fact is she could well be dead in 30 months.
It looks to me like the system is counting on Marilyn – and millions of other Americans – dying before they can draw benefits from a system they paid into all their lives. It looks to me like government programs operate exactly like health insurance companies – profiting from delay and denial.
It looks to me like the system works exactly as Congressman Alan Grayson put it when he brusquely summarized the “plan” of opponents of healthcare reform:
“Don’t get sick; and if you do get sick, die quickly.”
• • •
Where I come from, you don’t “put your business in the street”, so I’m naturally reluctant to reveal such personal information as I have here. Trust me; I’m not doing so because I’m looking for charity or sympathy.
So why am I doing it? Because people need to be disabused of the foolish notion that we have the greatest healthcare system in the world. We don’t.
I hope this is a slap in the face to people who, like us, have health insurance and think they’re protected – they aren’t. I hope this is a slap in the face to those who swallow the lies spread by despicable pundits and politicians who rant against healthcare reform.
Above all, I hope this is a slap in the face to those who smugly think they’ve got it made – and to hell with everyone else. One day, they may find themselves beside me in Healthcare Hell.
©2011 Tom Cordle
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And John's question is a good one. Still think we have the greatest healthcare system in the world? If so, you ARE delusional.
What's amazing is that so many companies willingly lose money in court, just to "make a point" about how far they are willing to go to deny a claim. They think it "sends a message" to others and prevents folks from challenging the denial of claims by adjusters.
Sometimes, I wish we all lived in Canada or Cuba or something. A country that actually cared about its own people.
I have a similar story and ended up on state aid which now that Jerry Brown has generated the budget may be gone for me shortly. Personally in my case I am the cancer victim and doctors were so ego-driven they could not find the cancer until I was anemic for a year plus. Every disease brings other diseases at a certain age so you must be treated by multiple physicians for varied things. It's mind-boggling.
There is no way that 50% of us won't be in healthcare hell...I also appreciate your need for privacy and the greater need to share this; when I realized that so many people do NOT call their doctors on their crap I started my blog in part to vent and in part to share my experiences so people would get it. Unfortunately, I have been told by a reasonable source that so many patients do not want to know about their diseases. You cannot make intelligent decisions unless you have information. I find this denial appaling. I understand it, but as much as I'd like to crawl into a cave without being proactive and clear with my docs, I'd probably be dead.
Again thanks, and good luck.
Attn Editors: Why is this a front page story on big Salon.
I do have coronary artery disease and diabetes. I can afford a gym membership so that's what I'm doing about that. Can't work your way out of cancer through fitness.
Keeping good thoughts for you and yours.
On a personal note, I was dropped from an excellent policy when a cyst was discovered on my liver because the doctor said I was probably born with it. Were it not for the fact that my daughter is an officer in the military, I would be paying through the nose for coverage.
When you get a minute, give my post a read and get a senior's take on the healthcare issue.
I am very, very sorry that your wife has been diagnosed with cancer, and for what you and your family will be faced with in the months and (hopefully) years to come.
" St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go.
I owe my soul to the company store."
Collectively you and Mrs. have 90 years paying into a system that refuses to help. That's horrible.
I am sending you all of my best wishes to you and your wife.
I am so very sorry you even need to deal with this crap when you have so much on your plate. My prayers for your family.
You and your wife are in my thoughts and prayers.
I was covered by our health plan until my husband died. Then they cut me off, even though I took his place in the company. I was forced to buy Cobra at a huge monthly cost for three months while I waited for my "new" coverage to be in place. What BS...absolutely nothing changed except my husband died. Now I am covered again, but your story scares me.
My thoughts go out to you both. This is a travesty.
I grew up in Canada and moved to the US in 1988. In the years I've lived here, I've been increasingly appalled and disgusted by how greed and corporate power, in the "healthcare system," (such a bizarre phrase) often shortens the lives of Americans who think (why?) their system is the world's best...because?
I am fortunate enough to own a Canadian passport and plan to retire there, should I live long enough, so I will not be bankrupted by medical crises. As I write this, my 76 yr old mother is in a BC hospital for the third month -- at no additional costs to her, or to me, at all. Everyone who abhors "socialism" can rue their disdain at some point.
Tom--fine reporting.....thanks
Daughter left for New Zealand last year to establish residency. She doesn't intend to live there full time after that is accomplished, but she considers that status her 'insurance' for the future. Canada? I'm coming home.
My heart and thoughts are with you and your wife. PLEASE, if there is absolutely anything I can do to help with the process or just send good wishes, do not hesitate to let me know.
♥
@Gabby Abby: Personally, I find it appalling that people establish residency in a country that they have no intention of living in, then expect all the benefits when they've only paid into the system a relatively short time. It happens here in Canada all too often and I think it should be illegal. If a country isn't good enough to live or pay taxes in over the long haul, they why is it good enough to care for you when the chips are down? That's an insult to the people who pay the freight year in, year out. It kind of reminds me of the people who run American health "care." They're only in it for the good times too.
For most of my adult life I had no health insurance. People thought I was crazy, but health insurance is like an umbrella that gets taken away as soon as it starts to rain.
People don't need health insurance. They need health care.
I’m sad to hear about this.
Like you, “Where I come from, you don’t ‘put your business in the street’”, thus I have not. Suffice it to say that I have been experiencing these same exposures of the real “death panels” of our “healthcare system”, which is not, in fact, any kind of a system at all, but rather a business purely for profit.
While America may have the best healthcare in the world, there is no real system to access it and its accessability is close to the poorest among industrialized nations. Having the best healthcare is meaningless when one cannot access it. Like everything in America, it is not based on need but on ability to pay, which is the preferred structure of the wealthy elites that control our government.
You have accurately outlined the abominable system erroneously called Health insurance. My 7 year old grand daughter had a kidney transplant when she was 3. Her father lost his job and they went through and are still going through the kind of hell you are. Yours is not an unusual story. Thanks for adding your voice to those who feel that Obamacare is woefully inadequate. R
all the best to you and your wife
Under the circumstances, I don't wish to be argumentative, but I see things quite differently. We all pay into a system with the understanding that when a healthcare crisis arises and we desperately need help, the system we have paid into all our lives will be there to save us, if not from death -- that isn't always possible -- at least from destitution. We are wrong to believe any such thing. As I said, our govt programs operate very much like heartless, soulless insurance companies -- delay and denial.
It doesn't have to be that way, regardless of the number you cite. We certainly find -- borrow -- trillions to finance useless wars that serve only to further enrich the wealthy and well-connected -- and further impoverish those who actually do the fighting.
Read the comments from those who live outside this country, and you'll quickly discover they simply can't imagine the system we live -- and suffer -- under. They can't imagine it because it doesn't exist in their countries, countries that are all much less wealthy than ours.
Frankly, in this country we have chosen obscene wealth for a few over basic care for the rest of us. Why we have made that choice is complicated, but I believe it begins with the childish notion that everyone has an equal opportunity to become rich. That is simply not the case, and even if it were, simple statistics make plain not everyone can be extraordinary.
As I said, I'm not looking for anyone's sympathy or charity, but I am looking for all of us to face up to the stark and shameful reality that in this -- the richest of all nations -- we do not live up to one of the two fundamental promises made to citizens, that is to "promote the general welfare".
It's buried in the federal debt....the debt, not the deficit.
That $1 trillion is approximately the amount owed to Social Security by the federal government.
Here's the conundrum. In order for the federal government to make good on this obligation, it will have to restore those funds through deficit funding because the sum total of our tax collections won't cover the current operating budget, let alone the debt to Social Security.
I have seen it written that there was never any guarantee that funds collected for Social Security would be sequestered for Social Security....but the truth is that the federal government has been issuing bonds to Social Security in exchange for the social security contributions and therefore the social security contributions never passed through the general fund. It wasn't collected and added to the general fund. The proceeds from the sale of the bonds were added to the general fund, but that's a bookkeeping but this is a case where things equal to the same thing aren't necessarily equal to each other.
The fact that we let there be for profit insurors between health care providers and health care consumers is the real death panel in all this.
I am sorry to hear of your family suffering in the Tom.
Healthcare in this country is a travesty because of the chokehold the insurance companies have over it. Sadly, our legislators, by and large, are paid, in hefty campaign contributions and lots of gifts from PACs to keep it the way that it is or to let it get worse. I think their greed has overrun their sense of understanding that, if we can't afford their policies, we'll have to cut them loose. Eventually, the well will be dry. And then, so will they. Of course, many of us will suffer in the meantime.
Satya and I took a little trip back in October, and stopped off in Tampico Plains (did I get that right) to meet up with Tom. We spent several hours together talking. Well, Tom did most of the talking but I am often content to listen, and Satya never talks much.
I bought a copy of Tom’s Book, “The Disappearing Cemetery,” which was the first time I ever bought a book directly from the hands of the author, and got Satya one of Tom’s CD’s.
We had dinner together at the one good restaurant in town…it might actually be the only restaurant in town, come to think of it….and then we spent the night in this wonderful little log cabin bungalow colony that he turned us onto. Best night’s sleep on the whole trip.
Driving away from Tampico Plains (?), I was thinking that I envied Tom, living up there in the mountains of Tennessee, while I had to return to the flatlands of Florida.
That image of rustic bucolity was shattered when Tom told us about his wife’s cancer, and it was shattered again with this article.
They have to drive 60 miles to a hospital. In Florida, there are probably five major hospitals within ten miles of my house. Sometime access to health care is as simple as the functions of time and distance.
I am angry about Tom’s situation because facing a life-threatening illness is hard enough; facing bankruptcy because of a life-threatening illness at the same time is intolerable.
In 2003, when I went through my cancer experience, the total cost of my treatment came to more than $500,000. My total out-of-pocket cost was zero…but that was seven years ago.
Today, if I had the same condition, I couldn’t afford – and I wouldn’t get – the same treatment I got then.
Something has changed in America in the past seven years…and not for the better.
The question is what are we going to do about it….or is there anything we can do about it?
A small correction or two -- it's Tellico Plains and we have several decent restaurants in our tiny town without a traffic light, thanks to the fact we are the debarkation point for the beautiful Cherohala Skyway.
Yes, it's definitely bucolic here, but I find a good single-malt scotch to be the best cure when my bucolic acts up.
Will and I just recently discovered that there has been much better treatment available for his carcinoid cancer in Germany (and possibly other countries) for the past dozen years. Here, it's still considered experimental treatment (probably as a way of insurance denying the charges.) Sickening.
My father was the president of a small construction company in Atlanta. He had a heart attack six years ago that put him in a coma for three days, and due to anoxic brain injury, he cannot care for himself. My stepmother is broke and now using Medicaid and the VA hospital.
Americans should be ashamed and outraged that we don't have a public option for people who can't afford the loopholes and Machiavellian constructs of PPOs, HMOs, and insurance companies, who make their money by not saving lives.
6 months or less to live. If I can think of any option but COBRA I will PM you (beg, borrow or steal to buy it, by the way).
Our problems are so small by comparison- but wanted to share that Blue Cross just turned down, for the second time, my husband's MRI charges for his shoulders (both have apparently totally ripped rotator cuffs, which you can't diagnose by an X-ray apparently, because he's had those over the last year, and despite complaining about excruciating pain to his doctor, suffering through a painful PT process, which he shouldn't have been doing by the way, and fighting for pain meds, the X-rays showed nothing. Can anyone explain why they denied the diagnostic MRIs? I'm listening to a phone call and the imaging company us offering to put us on a payment plan....
No doubt those “communist” dictatorships in Western Europe are much better at providing healthcare than are the “rugged individualist” insurance companies in this country.
Proximity is no measure of friendship, my friend, and trust me, the feeling are mutual. Without exception, everyone I know outside of the US is appalled at our profit-based healthcare system.
As you mention with the Trident, we are once again bearing witness that while there’s no money in this country for NPR or Planned Parenthood or education, there is always enough money to bomb another country, in this case Libya. That’s because there’s also always enough money to grant another tax cut for the wealthy and corporations,
Sorry to hear of your family’s troubles. Yes, the sad, sad truth is that every family in America – save for the uber-rich – is one medical disaster away from the poor house. Even sadder is that so many of those families deceive themselves into believing that is not so. And yes, Americans should be ashamed, but they should be ashamed of themselves as well for continually voting against their own interests.
Sorry for you husband’s troubles. It’s beyond me to explain why the MRI isn’t covered, other than to say this another example of an insurance company getting between you an your doctor. Conservatives bewail the govt getting between you and your doctor, but they don’t seem to mind at all when it’s an insurance company getting between – until it happens to one of them. That’s what happens when you’re blinded by the blight of the profit motive.
Conservatives are figuratively – and in some cases literally – dead wrong to trash Obamacare. It has already made in difference for us in that the insurance company is no longer able to invoke the caps and the cancellation that would surely have followed her diagnosis.
This most certainly is The Greatest Healthcare in The World. . .
. . .For Healthcare Industry profits and CEOs, it's never been better.
One Local Example:
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/03/26/3504707/sutter.html
$878 Million annual profit for a regional NOT-FOR-PROFIT COPORATION! Along with the CEO crying that he needs to cut the union because time are so tough. Humbug!
Is this a great healthcare system or what?
It is constructive to look beyond insurers. In addition to fixing insurance, we can't get the job done with these pigs at the trough.
Thanks for visiting and welcome to my little corner of the 'hood. I maintain, and I think with perfect justification in the Constitution that says one of the primary aims of this nation is to "provide for the general welfare". Seems to me inarguable that healthcare would be at the top of list when it comes to providing for the general welfare.
The plain truth of the matter is that there are some things a civilized society should NOT leave to the vagaries and avarice of the Free-Market, and again, healthcare should top the list.