I am currently one of the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance. I have lacked such coverage for more than a year now, ever since I left my job at a community mental health clinic to take a much-needed break from the compassion-fatiguing work I had engaged in for the previous decade. Five months ago, I returned to work on a part-time basis. However, I was ineligible to receive health benefits because I was employed for less than 30 hours a week. As of last week, though, that has changed. An opportunity arose to increase my hours and gain the coveted full-time status, and I seized upon it. My reasons for doing so had less to do with furthering my income or professional development than with getting health insurance, which I will have as of December 1. At some point thereafter, I plan to see an orthopedic doctor.
For several months now, I have been experiencing increasing pain and loss of mobility in my right shoulder. I have put off having it fully examined and treated because of the cost associated with doing so sans health insurance. I did finally break down last month and see my primary care physician, who was kind enough to charge me a nominal fee and provide me with a sling and some samples of an anti-inflammatory medication. However, he was unable to tell me with any certainty what was wrong with my shoulder. That would likely require a procedure such as an arthrogram or MRI, which would be considerably more expensive than an office visit alone. (According to BlueCross BlueShield, “the national average cost of an MRI is nearly $2,000.”) Depending on the test results, surgery and/or physical therapy would likely come next. Such treatment would no doubt cost significantly more than the tests themselves. Given the financial disincentives to pursue this sort of health care, I have opted to live with the discomfort as best I can. But I shouldn’t have to make that kind of choice. No American should.
But many of us are compelled to do so, sometimes with tragic results, as the following story by Bob Herbert in the New York Times details:
Lonnie Lynam, a self-employed carpenter in Pipe Creek, Tex., specialized in spiral staircases. Friends thought of him as a maestro in a toolbelt, a whiz with a hammer and nails.
“His customers were always so pleased,� his mother told me. “There was this one family, kind of higher class, and he built them one of those glass holders that you would see in a bar or a lounge, with the glasses hanging upside down in different sizes. It was awesome.�
Lonnie had a following, a reputation. He was said to have a magic touch.
What he didn’t have was health insurance.
So when the headaches came, he tried to ignore them. “We’ve had migraines in our family,� said his mother, Betty Lynam, who is 67 and lives in Creston, Iowa. “So he thought that was what it was.�
Lonnie’s brother, Kelly, said: “He wasn’t the type to complain. And since he didn’t have insurance …â€?
Kelly, 45, worked on different jobs with his brother. He was the one who rushed Lonnie to an emergency room one day last fall when the headaches became so severe that Lonnie couldn’t stand up.
It would be great if there were something unusual about this story: A person without health insurance gets sick. The person holds off on going to the doctor because there’s no way to pay the bill. The person is denied the full range of treatment because of the absence of insurance. The person dies.
Lonnie Lynam’s headaches had been caused by cancerous tumors in his brain. During surgery, doctors discovered that the cancer had spread from other parts of his body.
Cancer is no longer the all-but-automatic death sentence that it once was. Extraordinary progress has been made in fighting the myriad forms of the disease.
But, as the American Cancer Society has recently been stressing, the health coverage crisis in the U.S. is a major drag on this fight.
“A woman without health insurance who gets a breast cancer diagnosis is at least 40 percent more likely to die,� said John Seffrin, the cancer society’s chief executive.
According to the cancer society: “Uninsured patients and those on Medicaid are much more likely than those with private health insurance to be diagnosed with cancer in its later stages, when it is more often fatal.�
The uninsured (and underinsured) are also much less likely to get the most effective treatment after the diagnosis is made.
There are 47 million Americans without health insurance and another 17 million with coverage that will not pay for the treatments necessary to fight cancer and other very serious diseases.
The bottom line, said Mr. Seffrin, is that “the number of people who are suffering needlessly from cancer because they don’t have access to quality health care is very large and increasing as I speak.� [full text]
Kmareka.com 
Only after the experience of living through a long-term illness with someone, with all the requirements of constant care and treatment, of repeated hospital stays and procedures, can one appreciate two things. First, the amazing quality of care and efficacy of medical treatment available demonstrates that Ameriucan medicine is the finest in the world. Secondly, the shockingly high costs of this treatment is just as astounding, and if there is no insurance or other resources, treatment is denied or very difficult to find. The cost of adequate medical insurance is compounded by sometime insurmountable co-pays that can also result in delay of treatment or receiving no treatment at all. There is no quick fix to any of this. The issues are more complicated than just money–at the core are national priorities and the need for a candid discussion of what those priorities should be. It is unfortunate that the current mix of political candidiates, of both parties, are more interested in scoring points and not dealing with core issues. If ever there was a need for a third party with the best interest of all Americans as the Only core issue, it is now.
If we had a rational approach to healthcare things would be much different. We would invest in prevention, and primary care for everyone. We would make maternal and infant health a priority. Many lives would be saved by early detection and treatment of diseases–not only cancer, but diabetes and hypertension. We would construct our cities and suburbs to make walking and biking much more safe and pleasant than it currently is. Our schools would serve our chidren the best school lunches, and teach them nutrition as well. Home economics would be a required course for all middle school students, so our kids would learn how to cook, budget, and keep their homes safe.
But hey, we bought ourselves a war.
I’m with you on the third party, Mr Wolberg.
The problem is simple: Money.
Our political system is so inherently corrupt that fund raising is almost a full-time job for any elected official. Which makes the lure of big donations ever harder to resist. Of course we all know about the strings attached to those big donations.
I will keep saying this: by giving tax cuts to the wealthiest, to give corporations basically a free ride, it’s not the money per se. It’s that
money = power
The equation is that simple. By allowing a concentration of wealth, we’re allowing a concentration of power. Insurance companies cannot compete toe-to-toe with gov’t on price. They have to make a profit and pay those huge bonuses. That money has to come from somewhere.
Big companies have traditionally not wanted universal coverage because it gave them a way to hold onto employees that, historically, was cheaper than paying them more. The spiralling cost of care may be changing that, and we may reach a tipping point soon. Wal-Mart has finally figured it out. Unfortuanately, by allowing the Big 3 automakers to foist health care onto the unions, the companies lose their incentive to continue to lobby for universal coverage.
It stinks. It’s about money. It’s always about money.