On a trip to New Mexico, I attended a town meeting that the Coalition for Community Health Access (CCHA) organized, at which uninsured people in the albuquerque community gave testimonials on their personal stories regarding medical bills and debt to the hospital.
One testimonial stood out in my mind: A woman working two minimum-wage jobs stood up and told her story -- she delivered her first baby at the hospital, complications ensued and an emergency c-section was performed. She qualified for public assistance for the cost of the delivery but was not told about it by the hospital. She later received a bill for $30,000. ($30,000?!?!?!) She had to file for bankruptcy, mortgage her home, etc. She will now be paying back this money for the next few years.
And yesterday, I posted a diary on a doctor in NM who is doing some amazing things with health access for the uninsured, including starting his own fair and just clinic and working with the CCHA. (more below the fold)...
Here's a paragraph from an article cited in the diary post:
For her part, Alma Olivas has become an expert of sorts on the intricacies of our modern health care system. When her uninsured grandmother needed hip surgery two years ago, Olivas was told she would have to pay $6,500 in advance. She and her mother only had $4,500 in savings, which was being drained to cover routine visits to the emergency room to pay for her grandmother's morphine shots. She finally pulled together enough credit cards to take out cash advances to qualify for the surgery and is now $50,000 in debt to UNM Hospital and $16,000 in debt to credit card companies. During her initial struggle, Olivas became involved with the Coalition for Healthcare Access--a consortium of nurses, doctors, lawyers, caseworkers, community advocates, health department workers--that has led her to work as a community health care advocate...
A few thoughts on this:
- health care professionals should be more actively fighting this bankruptcy reform bill, and
- with the recent slam of Kennedy's amendment to exempt medical bankruptcy from the "bankruptcy reform" bill in congress, the American Dream is slipping away and we may soon have no moral ground to stand on.