For almost all of my working life, the pursuit of better health insurance, and the penalties for not having it, have dogged my mind and burdened my life. We have been far more fortunate than most, and certainly way better off than many; but the worry has always been there.
Right now, I personally am in a fortunate position: I have a great job, my employer provides really good benefits and my wife and I are healthy. But that's not the whole story, and I've been writing letters and signing petitions to get a single-payer plan even discussed because I know that we, like almost every other American, are one paycheck or accident, or major illness, away from utter poverty and despair.
This week, it hit home big time.
My elderly mother has been deteriorating since my Father's death in the early 1990's. The only reason she is at home, and not in a nursing home, is that my sister manages to live with her and care for her. Were that not the case, mom would undoubtedly have ended up a ward of the state in a nursing home helplessly accepting whatever care (or neglect) its underpaid workers would be dishing out.
This week, the specter grew yet again, when my sister called to tell me she has cataracts. Now, understand that because she ran her own business for fifteen years, which she finally closed down to care for mom full time, she has no insurance. And no savings. And she can't qualify for medicaid because she has no legal dependents (laugh with me here) and is not (yet) disabled. Once she is blind, of course, she will be entitled to state aid.
And know that cataract surgery approaches about $25,000 per eye. It costs so much, by they way, because insurance companies have contracted to pay pennies on the dollar, and the providers recover costs by charging the uninsured upwards of 10,000% of what the insured will pay.
Now stop and think about this. A woman who worked hard all her life may go blind, because she is unable to pay an inflated price for a common procedure. At some point in the next couple of years, both she and mom will become dependents on the state. The family home will be sold; they will both be bankrupted, and then the state will step in to provide substandard care. She will undoubtedly suffer, and die sooner, as a result.
I know this is a rant; the story, for anyone making an argument, would be anecdotal, but it seems to me a very stupid thing we do, destroying people and increasing the burden of society -- so that insurance companies can be protected from competition, or better yet -- replaced with a reasonable and affordable medical system.
Go figure.