Health Care Rant

I know this is a sensitive topic for a number of people, and I know that there are also a number of people who couldn't care less. But I care. I care because I get it.

One of President Obama's election platforms was health care reform. Good or bad (and here's the big reveal I know you've been waiting for), this was probably the primary reason I voted for him.

I know people freak out about socialized health care. I know a lot of people think Canada and England should just keep their systems and leave us alone. I disagree. First of all, there's a big difference between the so-called socialized health care that many believe Obama is peddling and his actual plan. It's just one more pillar in his socialist agenda that will bring down capitalism, Christianity, and the United States as we know it. The sky is falling, the sky is falling, and so on. I think a little differently. Not that the bills he's attempting to put through Congress right now are perfect (nothing ever was, is, or will be), but if they are what he says they are, I think the plan actually reinforces capitalism by spurring private plans towards betterment by giving people another option. I think it can also save untold mountains of people from death and/or mountains of debt.

Several years ago, when I graduated college, I worked as a server in a restaurant. While employed there, of course I didn't have medical insurance. This was terrifying to me. My job didn't offer it (most companies don't offer benefits to part-time employees), and it would cost me half my paycheck to purchase my own. So I was uninsured for a while. Fortunately, I was young and healthy and nothing happened to me. I started working at Starbucks, which does offer benefits to its part-time employees (one of the reasons I worked there). Later on I worked for a temp agency, which also offered insurance benefits, although they were quite limited. I stopped temping to sub and work on my credential. A few days after I quit, I lost almost all vision in my eye. I called my insurance company to see if I was still covered. They said I was covered until the end of the month, which was a week from then. So I went to the doctor. It turns out I had a detached retina; I was in surgery the next afternoon.

Two weeks later I got a bill from the hospital for $15,000 and a letter saying that I was not insured. The next day I got a letter from my insurance company saying they retro-canceled my benefits to my last date of employment and would not pay for the surgery. Neither the hospital nor the insurance company would budge. I had a patch on my eye and I was suddenly $15,000 in debt for it.

I was uninsured until Matt and I got married. As a substitute I didn't qualify for insurance benefits, and I got turned down by the insurance companies because my surgery was considered a pre-existing condition. I didn't qualify for Medicare or anything else. Fortunately, I stayed fairly healthy. I did have an ear infection, which cost $100. It could have been much worse.

Perhaps if a program such as the one President Obama is proposing existed at the time I would not be sitting with $15,000 in medical debt. Perhaps I would not have been uninsured for three years, praying I wouldn't get sick or hurt because I couldn't afford even an ear infection.

So call me a socialist, but I hope these bills go through. Because I wouldn't want anyone to have to go through what I went through. And I know there are many out there who have been dealt much heavier blows as a result of a system so broken it's nigh impossible to fix.

This is what President Obama is proposing.