Weighing in on Health Care

It’s no secret that, polit­i­cally speak­ing, I fall left of cen­ter.  I’ve never made any secret of that (see posts from last year regard­ing cam­paign dona­tions and vol­un­teer­ing).  But I am one of the more con­ser­v­a­tive lib­er­als I know.  The Hus­band says my beliefs are truly schiz­o­phrenic — a weird bal­ance of con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues and pro­gres­sive polit­i­cal lean­ings.  I’m also a bit of a cyn­i­cal idealist.

Despite an intense involve­ment in last year’s elec­tion, I’ve refrained to from spend­ing too much time or atten­tion on the whole Health Care reform debate.  On one hand, I believe that an advanced nation such as ours has a moral imper­a­tive to make sure that all of its cit­i­zens have access to basic health care.  On the other hand, I don’t believe that the gov­ern­ment is capa­ble of effi­ciently run­ning any­thing, much less an effec­tive national health care program.

Before we con­tinue, I want to say that whole “socialst” argu­ment is just, par­don my french, stu­pid.  Oh, please!  What would you call Medicare, Med­ic­aid, Social Secu­rity, Unem­ploy­ment?  What about our nation­al­ized edu­ca­tion sys­tem?  I’m all for healthy debate but it at least needs to be intel­li­gent debate not name-calling and fear-mongering.

Back to health care — as I’ve men­tioned, The Hus­band is retir­ing.  Well, offi­cially, he is retired and the cor­po­ra­tion is dis­solved.  As a com­pany employee, now that the com­pany is gone so is my job.  And along with my job went my ben­e­fits includ­ing my health insur­ance.  Well, our health insur­ance — the kids were insured under me.

Last week The Hus­band and I met with our insur­ance agent to dis­cuss our self-insurance options.  I knew this con­ver­sa­tion was going to be ugly; and I knew that The Hus­band didn’t have a clue of how bad it was going to be.  Still, noth­ing pre­pared me for just how ugly the truth turned out to be.  I was pre­pared for sky-high pre­mium quotes.  I wasn’t pre­pared for out­right denial of cov­er­age.  Even worse, it never, ever, ever occurred to me that they would deny cov­er­age to one of my chil­dren.  But that’s exactly what hap­pened — The Son was denied coverage.

Let me repeat that — my 15 year old son was denied health care cov­er­age.

How wrong is that?!  How is it even con­ceiv­able in this coun­try — the coun­try that I love, the coun­try in which The Hus­band and I were born, the coun­try in which our son was born, the great­est coun­try in the world — a child can be denied health insur­ance coverage.

It’s been a week since I heard and still my mind reels and my stom­ach aches when I real­ize that I’m about to be the par­ent of an unin­sured teenaged boy.  A boy who last year at this time, in a freak touch-football acci­dent on the first day of school, fell and broke his col­lar­bone.  A boy who still has at least 8 remain­ing years of edu­ca­tion and finan­cial dependency.

I have just one ques­tion for those who object to a national health care cov­er­age plan — what the F**K am I sup­posed to do now?

I’m not ask­ing for hand­outs here.  I’m not ask­ing for free com­pre­hen­sive health care cov­er­age.  I want to buy insurance.

The worst part — he’s unin­sur­able because he’s been diag­nosed with Gilbert’s Syn­drome — a benign hered­i­tary con­di­tion that causes him to have an ele­vated biliru­bin level.  It’s not a dis­ease; it’s a syn­drome.  His liver is per­fectly healthy.  He will not suf­fer any long-term affects and this syn­drome does not make him any more vul­ner­a­ble to future or related health issues.

And runner-up for the worst part:  there’s no way I can risk hav­ing him offi­cially diag­nosed as hav­ing Asperger’s Syn­drome.  Per­haps by some mir­a­cle our agent will be able to find some­one who will insure him despite the Gilbert’s but can you imag­ine the pre-existing bur­den he’d carry through­out his entire life if he were also diag­nosed with Asperger’s (yet another non-heath-impacting condition)?

So now he’s damned if he does; damned if he doesn’t.  With­out the offi­cial Asperger’s diag­no­sis he won’t be elig­ble for full edu­ca­tional rights pro­vided under our “non-socialistic” edu­ca­tion sys­tem which means that his edu­ca­tion and future sucess could be in jeop­ardy.  With the diag­no­sis, he’d be unin­sur­able for his entire life — unless Con­gress can pass “social­is­tic” health care reform.

Words can­not express my anger, frus­tra­tion, and fear.  If you read this, all I ask is that you stop and think about my predica­ment.  If you’re a par­ent, how would you deal with not being able to buy health insur­ance for your chil­dren?  Imag­ine what one unin­sured hos­pi­tal­iza­tion could do to your fam­ily?  And if you have ques­tions or have heard neg­a­tive things about Obama’s pro­posed Health Care plan, take the time to edu­cate your­self on the facts.

As always, com­ments welcome.

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