The big problem with being a moderate is that it is hard to get worked up about the rhetoric from opposing parties. On the subject of healthcare reform the vitriol reached a fevered pitch this week with the Rush and Beck routine and doomsday viral email scenarios of golden toothed, welfare cheating, jobless population (some of them not even American) milking the proposed taxpayer-financed system dry.
What does get me worked up though is not abuses of the system (in any program, privately financed or not – there will be abuses of the system) but how abusive the current system is.
My family had a small business employing my dad, mom and brother – and my exposure to health insurance didn’t really start until I began my second full time job back in the early 80′s. I must have really been a rube during my first full time job out of college because I don’t remember making a claim for anything. But in my second job I have a distinct memory of listening to a co-worker describe how she planned to have some plastic surgery done since she knew a doctor who would do it and claim it was a medical necessity so it would be covered. During that same period of time my father was diagnosed with esophageal cancer (it was in its earliest stages) and our family journey into a vastly changed healthcare system began. For 10 years after his treatment concluded he was ineligible for health insurance at any price.
As far as my dad was concerned he felt a small measure of security. As a veteran of the Korean War he always had access to some care offered at the VA hospital – so we knew that if the cancer came back or he got really sick he had a place to go. I was working for a Fortune 500 company at the time so health benefits were plentiful and cheap for me. But our family business faced rising premiums (which would be a bargain today) providing coverage to my mom, brother and other full time employees. My father simply stopped going to the doctor. And every year when he had to submit to an exam to see “if the cancer came back,” we would all hold our collective breaths knowing that if even the smallest speck of malignant cells appeared the clock would be reset another 10 years.
The thing is that most people know someone like my dad. The changes in healthcare wrought in this nation during the past two decades changed the way we all view medicine: with a resigned abdication of will. We are helpless to push back because we fear retribution. We are helpless to push back because, for the working, taxpaying population who are self-employed or working for a small business (defined by the health insurance industry as having less than 200 employees), there is no real other option. We pay exorbitant premiums on high deductible policies and hope we don’t get sick – strangely not because we fear illness but because we fear financial ruin. Hello! Isn’t that why we have insurance? And every year we have to fill out annoyingly detailed new applications for health care designed to uncover any pre-existing condition which can be used to hang up our coverage. This point was driven home to me this past week when I watched the blogger/friend Kim Moldofsky at a press conference speaking about her $ 65,000 deductible. For those of you who missed it you can see her WHRRL story or catch the clip on CSPAN.
As a moderate I want this system to change. I want it to be fair and reflective of the need and ethically administered and I know this won’t always be the case. But I’m okay with that because the system as it now stands really stinks.
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Thanks for the link love. I don’t see the current legislation as the end, but rather the start of reform that is needed by so many American families.
Well said. Not a perfect piece of legislation, but certainly an improvement and a long awaited reform.