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My Harry Winston Diamond and My Healthcare
Maybe I am getting old as I look to the past for some better times, but maybe I have grown a bit wiser about recognizing what quality is and what it is not. When it comes to my health, I pay much more than I ever did for care and I get far less -- and what I am able to afford is often of far worse quality than it used to be. I do think about how healthcare has changed in my lifetime and all that my children will never know is possible. And I remember one little engagement ring and how its story foretold my healthcare journey as a once middle class, American wife and mother.
It's not that I long for the good old days - but I do think many Americans still just want simple quality and value in healthcare, and in our current system we certainly have complicated and convoluted many issues at the expense of not only our human compassion but also our American common sense.
When I was a young bride, my husband and I walked by the jewelry counter at our favorite JC Penney store and saw a small but elegant engagement ring. At $199, it seemed expensive to us, but the salesperson told us it was a ring with a tiny Harry Winston diamond - with beautiful facets - and it sparkled on my finger like nothing I had ever worn before. And we stood at the beginnings of our now-33 year marriage with great hope and all the deep passion and love that our young relationship could hold.
Soon, I would give birth to our first child. In the months leading up to our baby's birth, even as my little Harry Winston ring grew a bit more snug on my finger, I saw my doctor for regular pre-natal care and routinely spent 15 or 20 minutes with him as we discussed my pregnancy and my health. His charges for the full seven months of care and the delivery of my child were set in advance, along with the routine lab work. And, because my labor was so fast and my good doctor did not make it to the hospital in time to actually attend the delivery, a nurse delivered my beautiful son and my doctor adjusted his set fee to reflect missing the delivery. Hmm...
When I left the hospital after three days of terrific nursing care for me and for my baby, including lots of wonderful advice from maternity ward nurses, my husband checked me out through the hospital administrative office, but I never worried once about being slammed with financial issues either while in the hospital or upon discharge. As a patient, I was able to focus on my care and my baby's start in life. What a marvelous time for me as a wife and mom. I recall small bills but nothing onerous or crushing - and certainly nothing that robbed me of my own well-being or threatened my child's health in any way.
Fast forward 33 years. I avoid the doctor whenever possible. I hate going to the doctor as it is unpleasant and humiliating to be checked out financially and made to pay my portion of the bill before anyone even provides one moment of service or any healthcare at all. My healthcare insurance costs - for myself and my husband - have escalated far faster than my income. And I never plan to seek care before I gauge if I feel sick enough to warrant the expenditure from the family budget. As my story was already told in SiCKO, everyone knows I lost my house, went bankrupt and gave up nearly everything I owned even though I had insurance - and lots of insurance.
I have a lot of skin in the game, as the popular saying goes. And I never see a doctor for more than a few moments at a time any more. Cancer check-ups be damned, it's a whole day off to get one test done.
I let chronic pain linger. I let symptoms wait. I take huge amounts of over-the-counter medications in the attempt to avoid any interaction with the healthcare system. I don't want to ever take time off work for being sick or worse yet for a family member's illness, and I cannot remember the last time a doctor called me in response to a simple question or test result - I always have to be assertive to even get a response. And many times, healthcare providers seem truly annoyed when having to deal with any patient follow-up at all.
Let it not be said that Americans don't wait for care. We wait for weeks before we go to seek care. We wait in waiting rooms and business offices for forms and insurance benefits to be scrutinized and co-pays and deductibles to be collected brashly and crudely as our financial transactions are open for everyone in the waiting room to hear. We wait inside the doctor's office or exam room - often in some state of undress with no word on approximate time for a doctor to come in. And then we wait for scripts and follow-up appointments. Question any of those waits, and we are often subject to verbal scolding or fear that our daring to speak up might slow the process even more. Healthcare in America? For an average, insured woman like me in 2009? It is to be survived when absolutely necessary only.
If I could avoid being in this mess of a system until I just die in my sleep some day, I'd be happy.
But that's not likely. The healthcare system is a monster of profit-making potential and force now - for not only our healthcare providers but also many of our political leaders. I am incidental to their feeding frenzy. I am only needed as a payer of premiums, co-pays, deductibles, prescriptions and all the other high costs for my husband and myself. I get expensive tests and procedures not always because I need them (though I may not know that) - I get the tests that my insurance says I am allowed to have and that have been deemed profitable by some business folks wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. If I am deemed worthy financially, I get care.
Listen to those who testified yesterday for the Senate Finance Committee as they talk about us as metrics and how to mold and shape our healthcare system - listen for any hint of humanity in these talks.
Don't be fooled by the double-speak you hear. Having a national health care system is not the same as allowing the government to control your healthcare. In fact, giving over your power as a patient to an insurance company because the insurance industry bought and paid for health reform that forces us all to buy their for-profit, financial product is not healthcare but is the highest form of control you can give away - control over your own body.
It doesn't have to be this way. It could be a just and responsible system. It could be a sound, caring and competitive system in which we all pay fairly into one public pool, we all get care when we need it and we all are allowed to choose those private or public doctors, hospitals, clinics and other providers that deliver the kind of care we want to receive.
I want a publicly funded, privately delivered system in which I choose my care and my provider. And so do more than 60 percent of my fellow Americans. My choice. My care. My life. My nation's system.
So, what happened to my little Harry Winston diamond? It went the way of our healthcare system. One cloudy afternoon about 15 years ago when my husband was in the hospital and needing more medication, I sat in a pawn shop office and bargained for $120 in cash for my engagement ring. I left the pawn shop shaking and beaten-down but drove to the pharmacy where I picked up my man's meds.
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17 Comments so far
Show All'Don't be fooled by the double-speak you hear. Having a national health care system is not the same as allowing the government to control your healthcare. In fact, giving over your power as a patient to an insurance company because the insurance industry bought and paid for health reform that forces us all to buy their for-profit, financial product is not healthcare but is the highest form of control you can give away - control over your own body.'
The disconnection of the individual mind\soul from virtually every facet of physical life, beginning with the very meaning of life, moving through the processes (drinking, eating, locating\fashioning shelter, curing ills) associated with staying alive, up to and including the surrendering of the right to simply move about the surface of the planet without trespassing, is the paramount issue at hand...this disconnection allows the destruction of the planet via ownership, industrialization, toxification and waste accumulation, and creates an utter dependence of the individual upon paid 'others' for water, food and shelter, which necessitizes jobs and money...(ooh, I like 'necessitizes')...
ulitmately, the individual must physically re-connect with their own survival, which means attending to their own water, food, shelter and healing again...
The so called FUCKING Healthcare Industry is KILLING AMERICA with it's GREED. Like a vicious league of Vampires they have set upon anyone they can suck dry. FUCK these parasites and the rotten mess they've created, it should be shit canned wholesale and healthcare should immediately be Nationalized. OUR bodies have been turned into nothing more then huge profit centers for the same heartless soul less Accts. Lawyers, CEO, CFO and scammers that seem to have risen to power in every facet of American life these days. Winning back the Congress and the WH seems so far to amounted to less then nothing. The pack of wolves busy trying to protect themselves this moment in Congress will stop at nothing to defeat any bill that changes their bloody ramapge.
Sioux Rose
DONNA: Powerful story. I, too, had a really easy first birth/hospital experience as a young teacher with Blue Cross those days. But traveling the years as a freelance writer means self-employment and NO insurance. So far, so good. However, I am now facing some expensive dental needs. How many insurance plans cover dental, anyway?
One light in the tunnel of this presumed forced insurance purchase is that with so many Americans going homeless, being jobless, I do NOT see how such a system can be imposed? Insurance of all kinds bothers me. When South Florida was hit by numerous hurricanes my car insurance refused to replace my windshield. They took $66 a month for 20 years, but I needed a $150 repair and was denied it. An opening story on AOL asked what would happen if a grave disaster hit this state? In truth, its insurance funds esetimated at 1 billion would be insufficient to cover something as calamitous as another Hurricane Andrew. That makes me wonder why I pay home owners' insurance? Will any $ be left in the pot, or will the homeowners' branch use the same "strategy" that enables their medical cousins to get away with murder (literally), and state that "thus and so" isn't covered, or the more concise, "Sorry. We've run out of funds" in the event of being placed on the giving (as opposed to receiving) end?
So much of our nation is now run like a casino, organized crime could learn a lot from our politicians, presuming they weren't groomed in such "schools" of scandal.
Sioux Rose, my husband says that if insurance is mandatory, then it should be non-profit. If you are required to have insurance to drive then it should come from a non-profit insurance company. What a concept. If all insurance companies were required to be non-profit the implications for change are mind boggling.
But of course, we don't need health insurance, we need health care. The one meets the needs of the corporations, the other meets the needs of the people.
So what is the penalty for not buying insurance? No treatment? Seems that's what a lot of us have now and it doesn't cost an unlimited amount of money I don't have every month. We don't need insurance--we need health care. The two are not the same. I feel for the author and admire her fight to get it right. I won't, however, hold my breath waiting for any politician to do the right thing against the insurance lobby. Money does rule.
A society gets the government it deserves. We aren't all guilty of being selfish, greedy, apathetic, cowardly, envious, vicious bullies - but the collective 'America' certainly is just that - and that's why an egregiously immoral extortion racket euphamistaclly termed 'insurance' exists in this country. The US is controlled by corporations - the government is owned by corporations - this is known (in the rest of the world) as FASCISM. Americans - collectively, again - prefer FASCISM over FREEDOM, JUSTICE, and EQUALITY.
Keep pointing this issue out to everyone you meet, and maybe someday we can defeat these Fascists, just as Hitler and Mussolini's fascist governments were defeated - by FIGHTING, tooth-and-nail, against the worst possible kind of oligarchy known to man - TOTALITARIAN FASCIST RULE. And don't expect the vicious, greedy, arrogant few at the top to go down without one hell of a fight. And don't be surprised that your neighbors - and even your children - will turn against you. As Hitler so arrogantly put it: "Your children will know nothing else." Do your own children know that the US is a Fascist State? Or have they been indoctrinated (brainwashed) - in public or private schools, and via pervasive corporate media propaganda - to believe that America is a 'free country' and that we practice 'democracy' in 'our republic' - just like the Nazis did... ???
This greed is not just of the helath Care Industry. It is rife through the entire system,
Health Care is one of the issues that is just so much more immediate to Americans as it often means the difference between life and death or having a home or being homeless.
That same Greed runs through every other industry. Look at the example of Enron, or of Politicians secretly passing a bill to extend patent protections on drugs.
Look at the warcare industry with a trillion dollars a year spent on arms and warfare.
Look at the revised Bankruptcy laws that made it easier for the Coporatiosn to escape their debts , while making it harder for the people.
Look at the multi trillion dollar bailout of the Banks and Borkerage houses.
Loot at how jobs have been outsourced and how the wealth Gap in America grows greater and greater .
It all comes down to the same thing GREED and Profits. Mammon rules over all. It a blind pursuit of the DOLLAR.
It is not just the Health Care system that is rotten to the core and needs a massive overhaul, it the entire system of PROFIT at any cost and of the Government being directed by the CORPORATION.
The system of Capitalism has to be torn down. The haves, and the have nots, the exploiters and the exploited has to end. We have to work towards societies that put eglatarianism and the well being of all over exceptionalism and the well being of the few.
And no , eglatarianism does NOT mean throwing everyone overboard and telling them to swim to shore, rewarding only those that make it to the other side.
Eglatarianism means those that are strong swimmers HELP those that are not.It means we all have value and are equally valued.
Amen!
In the old days ordinary people could get primitive medical care locally: the herbwife concocted medicines, the midwife delivered babies, the barber-surgeon did surgery, and the blacksmith pulled aching teeth. (The herbalists and midwives were actually more effective than the doctors whom the upper class resorted to.) Somewhat later, ordinary people had the option of homeopathy, which was a great improvement over conventional medicine, if only because of its insistence on hygiene.
But that was before the practitioners of allopathic medicine (which in German is appropriately called Schulmedizin, scholastic medicine) engineered a legal monopoly on medical care. In America, some alternative or complementary forms of medicine are allowed to exist in a market niche, but broadly speaking, if you're poor the doctors won't treat you and won't let anyone else treat you either.
Ah, America. A land where my cat gets better medical care than I do. Gotta love it.
Last night my husband and I attended a "listening tour" presented by "Organizing for America", which I guess could be called an extension of the Obama election campaign. They say they want to organize support for the president's policy priorities and build the grassroots movement so people can have an impact on their own communities. (I'm paraphrasing from their info).
We went because we wanted to see if they were interested in listening to us, or if they just wanted us to listen to them. Apparently they are focusing on 3 issues: Health care reform, education and energy.
But all the people in my group wanted to talk about was health care. Not a word about education or energy, just how the lack of health care is impacting everyone.
I won't go bore you with the details, and I am not sure what effect, if any, this type of meeting will have.
But here's what I'm going to do and if enough of us do it something may come of it: I'm going to send a get well card to the White House today. I'm going to write: "AMERICA IS SICK. PLEASE HELP US GET WELL BY IMPLEMENTING A NATIONAL HEALTH CARE PLAN NOW. GET WELL SOON AMERICA".
Then I'm going to send one tomorrow. And the next day, and so on. I have hoarded a stash of cards from thrift stores and rummage sales and I probably have enough for 2 or 3 months.
Maybe some of you have some cards laying around that you could send. As they mount up maybe they will have an impact. It's small but it's something.
What a great idea!! It's clever, simple and direct.
I'll plan to join you.
Sadly, I can't afford to send one 39 cent stamped card every day for three months (that cost adds up, too), but I can send one every now and then.
Aye, there's the rub. Postage for a 1st class card is actually 42 cents!!! But if we got together with friends and neighbors and sent a 2 lb. envelope full of cards it would only cost $5.20 (from where I live; check USPS.com for rates from your area). Get your yoga class in on it, or your golf buddies or better yet, everyone sitting in the waiting room at your Dr.'s office!
Don't forget the key words of "single payer health care" since national covers mandatory feeding of the insurance industry.
Too bad you have to pay postage, in Canada we can write to our MP and Ministers at their parliamentary offices without paying postage. Its a perk that MPs have, but it works both ways.
Oh Nooooo!!...ANOTHER reason why Canada is better than the USA.
You are right the bloodsucking insurance companies should be taken out of healthcare completely. Insurance is for THINGS not people.
Hi Prof, thanks, I will be sure to be more specific. I intend to vary my message a bit from time to time also. Maybe I will add "Canadians love it"!
I would be writing a lot more if we had that postage savings here. I usually just call on my cell, mostly to my local rep. You know, the one who voted in the bailout even though calls ran 8 to 1 against. Sigh.
This is a great story by someone who has really been there. Wake up America, before it's too late!
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