Why Affordable Health Insurance Matters

With all of the recent events around the Health Care Mandate, aka Obamacare, I’ve considered chiming in on the topic.

Nearly 22 years ago I was single, working a full and a part time job, and did not have health insurance. My full-time employer was a small company of only 15 employees and did not offer any benefits. I had lost the insurance that I had with my first wife in the course of the divorce and even if I could have access to a policy on my own, I could not afford it. The divorce and paying off our bills resulted in my living from paycheck to paycheck.

At one point I was resigned to packing a few things in my car and that would be my home. Sleeping in cheap food and lived a very simple life in a small run-down flat in a rear duplex behind an apartment building. I had to make the decision between eating and paying the rent or buying health care insurance. So, I tried to stay healthy as best as I could and prayed that I would not need medical care.

Then, I awoke in the middle off the night with a very sharp pain in my right eye. It felt like someone had stabbed me with a knife. I tried eye drops but could not even open my eye to do so. With total panic going on and knowing I could not afford it, I had to go to an emergency room of what was then a county ran hospital. I had heard that they could not refuse you for treatment even if you could not afford it. With one hand over the injured eye and fighting to see through my eyes watering and the pain, I drove several miles to help.

Once there, they determined that I had somehow torn the cornea of my eye. I was given some drops and I admit I took the bottle of drops that was on the tray that the doctor used to numb my eye so at least he would be able to take a look at it.

Not a major medical event, but painful. Then, came the bill. An emergency room visit is costly. I had to work out with the county that I would pay as much as I could to just keep paying something and keep a collection agency from hounding me, or worse yet, legal action taken against me. I had a bill of over 1000 dollars and I was paying them 20 dollars a month. I’d skip a couple of meals to make the payment.

So, I understand what it’s like to be a burden on the health care system.

Oddly enough, being a true lefty, it was hard for me to support the idea of mandated health care when it was first proposed by the Republicans during the term of President George W Bush. I felt it was an imposition to require that each person have health insurance.

When President Barak Obama came around and proposed the same basic idea, I saw it differently. The law that is now being debated by the Supreme Court has features to it that actually work. The law does not say that even if you can’t afford it, you have to try to find a way to pay for it, it helps people get support by things such as government subsidized medical care.

I know that some on the right feel that it’s a bad idea. I just want to remind them that we the founder of the Christian Church, Jesus said that we are our brothers keeper.

Having said that, I feel that it’s best to put every person in a health insurance program of some type. That way, no one becomes a burden on everyone else as I did when I had to go the emergency room. Someone had to pay for my medical care while I slowly paid it back, and sometimes people don’t.

Who? The rest of those who consume medical services through higher medical bills, higher insurance rates.

We’re not talking about free health care for everyone as is done in Canada and elsewhere.

One of the things that happens when you lose a job is they give you “Cobra” which should be called “Health Insurance You Can’t Afford”. The rate is usually 3 times what you had been paying. So, you can pay in some cases over 1000 dollars in a month for family health insurance. What makes this even worse is that it comes at a time when you are living on 1/3^rd of the income you had when you were employed, until even your unemployment insurance runs out or you decline a less than suitable job and it is taken away.

Do we need everyone in American in an affordable health insurance program?

You betcha!