The high cost of (no) health care
I found out this morning that someone I know died. Why? Because she was uninsured.
This past Spring, she wasn’t feeling well, but didn’t seek treatment. She wasn’t able to afford health insurance, so she implemented the only plan available: hope. As in, “hope it goes away.” It didn’t. Finally, she went to a county clinic, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia. Well, she may — or may not — have had that. But she also had lung cancer, something that no doubt would have been revealed by a more thorough checkup by a doctor or hospital covered through insurance. By the time this was discovered, it was too late, and so, a few months later, she’s dead.
Although all cancers are different, let me draw one point of comparison. When my father was diagnosed with cancer, he had health insurance, which covered initial tests and doctors and treatment and medication and so forth. They gave him only six months to live, but he made it almost three years. In the case of the woman I’m talking about, she was 17 years younger than my father. Maybe her cancer was more treatable — maybe her cancer was curable.
As it is, she is one of the 44,789 people who die every year because they have no health insurance; these are the people my new hero Congressman Alan Grayson apologized to a couple of weeks ago.
Recently I found myself seated at an event next to a surgeon I know. He’s for health-care reform, he told me (and who could be against it, when everyone agrees it isn’t working?). But he also talked about how the wrong sort of reform would wind up limiting care. No doubt. But one thing is clear: We’re already limiting care, and we’ve got the numbers to prove it. Today we can count one more fatality.
October 14th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
The people who scream about having health care being rationed in a government plan either don’t realize or care that by the plans we have now health care coverage is being rationed.
I had been taking Crestor for cholesterol control. The medical insurance company I have through work sent a notice that I would no longer be covered for the medication name brand. I had to switch to an “approved” generic. To be able to receive the name brand I need to use the generic and see if it works as well as the name brand.
My doctor has said that some generics are not as good as the name brand. I have been taking the generic now for several months and just had blood tests done to see how the generic is working.
The insurance companies are in business to make money not to keep people healthy.