Youth Media Blog-a-thon: Health Care
This post is part of the Youth Media Blog-a-thon, sponsored by Wiretap and Youth Outlook.
I hesitate to share any of this with the world, but…
A few weeks ago, a dear loved one in my family had an emergency operation. Literally, going in for a check-up on Monday, a surgery was scheduled for Tuesday. When we told the doctors Wait, we need a few days to think about this – they said waiting an extra day could be the fatal difference, and if they could have scheduled the procedure for Monday evening, they would have.
So we got in the next morning at 7am. Just writing about it here gives me a severe lump in my throat. I’ve always hated hospitals; to cope, I just pretended I was in a hotel lobby.
The doctors and hospital staff did a really good job of putting us at ease. As scared as we all were – especially the patient – we helped each other assume that the best was going to happen. I even called work to tell them I’d be out the next day, but would probably be back in on Thursday.
Afterward, this person was in a lot of pain. I won’t lie, just being with them, seeing so much misery – it was one of the worst times of my life.
I didn’t get back into work until the following week – of course, we had not realized how much care we were all going to need and how much time we were going to have to spend at home being with one another. Over time there were small steps of progress, there was less need for painkillers, there was a return of appetite, there was light, there was a day when we all started to relax a little.
And we’ve moved forward, and thank the universe and all that’s in it that we saw a full recovery. Everything is back to the way it was before, and we can go back to wasting our lives on the Internets.
But just when we thought we had left it behind us, we got the bill. And, this is about to sound crazy because I haven’t told anyone, but the total cost came out to more than $21,000. For a patient that was in at 7am and out at 5:30pm the same day.
Now before I get your blood pressure up, let me tell you insurance ended up covering most of it – but that we were still left paying a good chunk of change.
Of course, there was never any question during the whole process of whether we should wait on the surgery because of cost concerns. I don’t think the idea that we would have to pay even crossed my mind until we got that piece of mail. There was never a point when I was concerned about anything but my loved one. And when it comes to life-or-death situations, that’s really the only way it should ever be. There should never be a moment when the patient’s family has to think about how money is going to play into health care.
Fortunately for us, we had pretty good insurance coverage and the procedure was considered an emergency – not tied to a pre-existing condition. Even so, we still had to dig into our bulletproof wallets. But for many or even most people, this is not the case, as we all know people who go damn near broke paying for medical care for their loved ones.
How can anyone argue that health care is not a basic human right? I shudder to think if insurance had not covered part of our expense, how would we have afforded it? And if there had been complications? A follow-up procedure? Endless prescriptions? An extra day or two in the hospital?
We got off lucky, and but most people don’t, so…what are we gonna do about it?
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I’m glad to hear that things worked out for you and your family. I do wish that other people would see the importance of health care not only from a personal point of view, but from a societal point of view. More healthy people means happier people which means they’ll likely to be able to contribute something to this economy… they’ll have time to do something positive with their time instead of worrying about their health.
Clearly, the state of health care in the United States is pretty sad. As with many bills that are apt to shake up the status quo, there is a lot of misinformation being propagated and circulated by naysayers.
Why all the misinformation? In my mind, people have lost sight of whether or not we care about the health of our populace because all their care about (and have been trained to care about) is their own money and taxes.
I suppose people are so afraid of the government making decisions for us? Of doing stuff for us? Those people take for granted all the services that the government does provide for them—like maintenance of the highway, like providing “defense” for the country, like providing Medicare. For giving us stimulus money when the going is tough.
(And about those death panels. In some sense, health care rationing happens today. Already. If you can’t pay for a procedure either in the US or abroad, you can’t have it and if that procedure means you might die, well tough luck. Isn’t that a death sentence?)
I blame the whole thing on the insurance companies and the AMA. Of course, they are afraid of losing their stranglehold on how medical care is provided in this country. It is ridiculous.