NYCeve wrote about her friend who has decided to "go naked", i.e. without health insurance. As someone who went with junk insurance for the self-employed, and who two years ago decided the premiums weren't worth the the nonexsistent coverage, dropped the insurance to "go naked".
The go naked decision affected and still affects me and the choices I make regarding healthcare that should be a right and not a privilege.
In the hopes that the personal is political, I share my story today.
More after the jump.
One of the decisions I made two years ago was to drop to my junk insurance through Midwest Insurance. The preiums for a childbearing woman my age were becoming to steep, and the coverage, well, Midwest found frequent reasons to turn down payments, even if I met my obscene deductible of $5,000, which as a relatively healthy woman I almost never did.
I recently moved back to Duluth Minnesota for family and failed business reasons, but the decision to go naked was one that was a no brainer for me. Duluth has never fully recovered from the 1970s recession, and now the major industry is tourism. The poverty rate in the public schools is 40% and even if the low wage job, of which the majority in this region are in the human service field, offered health insurance, the average salary would preclude any low wage worker actually being able to afford to have the insurance co-pay taken out of the bi-weekly paycheck.
Like I said, even when I did have health insurance, I had "junk insurance". There was only once in my self-employed insured history that I actually met my deductible, and Midwest then found several reasons to deny my claims, including telling me that because of my pre-exsisting condition of Urinary Tract Infections(UTIs) that my kidney infections would not be covered.
The decison to live without health care means a million small decisions are made on an almost daily basis. For instance, I get the flu shot even though some years it was difficult to come up with the $25-$35. The flu shot might prevent me from more expensive endeavors, such a short hospital stay or not being able to work as an independent contractor.
It means that I don't take my nieces ice skating, because I might fall. It means my friend who wants to teach me snowbarding can't because what if something happens?
It means that frequently, I choose to use my naturopathic/herbalist training to treat things that an office visit might take care of in 15 minutes. For instance, I made a black root paste for a suspicious growth on my finger, hoping that it would cause the tumor to fall off, so I wouldn't have to be treated for possible skin cancer. Skin cancer that runs in my family and with my red hair, is very likely.
Going naked means I butterfly cuts instead of stitches, drink valerian root tincture instead of getting my sleep analyzed. It means I ignore the shoulder pain and do more yoga and look up corrective training, hoping that I can stave off a rotar cuff tear.
But sometimes, despite my live as healthy as possible lifestyle, things happen. After all, insurance is supposed to be planning for the unexpected, correct?
Today, was one of those unexpected moments. My grandmother died on Monday night, and today was her funeral. (it was a good death, and without being cruel, she needed to die, she would have been 91 next week, and she lived a full, complete life). My mother is also an invalid and needs constant help and supervision. Today, as I was pulling the car around for her to get into, I slipped on the ice, and felt something snap in my foot. Lying on the icy driveway, crying in pain, the first thought was "oh shit what do I do now?" This is the thought that runs through the uninsured's mind-not-Oh, it hurts, get help, or focusing on getting better-but the gamut of thoughts like-Urgent Care or the ER? St. Luke's where I don't have an outstanding bill, or the other hospital where I do? And of course the thought that my foot can not possibly be broken and how hard is it to self-treat?
Well, with as much pain as I was in, I still drove my mother to the funeral home, and then I drove myself to the ER. (My family thinks that I can take care of myself even though one of the reasons they insisted I move back home was so I wouldn't be by myself). As I was sititng in the ER, numbers kept ticking by me-how much are X-Rays? Do I really have to have the doctor look at this? How much is an ice-bag? Oh man, what if it is really broken and I need physical therapy? Do I stil have grandma's crutches? Can I just suck up this pain and not get the morphine shot? These are the questions that run through a naked person's head. In addition, the worry that my care will be just below or standard care, once the staff finds out that I am "self-pay."
Luckily for me, it's just a hairline fracture of some tarsals, and a really, really bad sprain, which is a relief for me, because now I am hoping my ER bill will not be astronomical. However, the followup, the pain meds(which I didn't fill, going to go with the suck up route) all will be considerations, and as a naked person, I will need to decide what is and what isn't really necessary to my care. And of course, a lot of my time will be spent rehabiliatting my own foot once I am able too.
These decisions are difficult ones to make, and ones that shouldn't have to be made by anyone, at anytime, for any reason. Right now, the morphine from the ER is kicking my bottom(manipulating my foot on the X-Ray table was too painful, even for me) and I am going to sleep it off.
I don't know if it is better to have health insurance, even junk high deductible insurance, but I do know that having to choose to be treated or not treated is a wearying exhausting process, and the viligance to protect myself from things leads me to miss out on a lot of great life experiences.
I will try to keep up with the comments, but since this my first experience with morphine, I am woozy and thirsty? I forget from medic trainng, is thirst a side effect of morphine, because hobbling to the bathroom just sucks on my crutches.(another expense that I wanted to turn down)
Thanks for listening.