Yesterday afternoon, I was browsing the shelves at the bookstore, when I found a book of WPA posters. As I thumbed through it, I saw a poster I had never seen before, and it gave me pause. It was this:
Lack of funds need not discourage from seeking competent medical care.
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I know a lot of people who have no health insurance - a lot of people that are very dear to me. There is a member of my family in the hospital at this very moment because he did not go to the doctor when he began to get sick, because since he has been out of work, he has had no health insurance and no financial means to pay out-of-pocket for a doctor visit. Lack of funds discouraged him from seeking competent medical care.
I have said many times that the primary reason I am working in the job I am, rather than pursuing a line of work I might prefer, is for the health insurance. I am terrified to let it lapse for so much as a second, lest we be denied coverage again. Adam had to have a couple of surgeries a few years ago, and I'm a woman, which seems to be only inches away from being its own preexisting condition (we're already charged more). I worry about what we would find in the current private insurance market. And what if I lose my job? What then? There's no way we could afford COBRA payments. And so I worry. I live in fear of financial meltdown due to medical bills.
When Adam was sick, we had wonderful insurance, but I still saw the bills. They were astronomical. And even though the medical expenses were covered, he was out of work for a couple of months, and I took several weeks off as well. We tore right through our meager savings and spent the next several years trying to catch back up. In truth, we never fully have.
And yet, for all of this, we were still so, so much better off than so many. We had good insurance. We had jobs that let us take time off and still come back at the end. We had enough credit that we were able to still buy groceries and gas and pay the electric bill, even when the bank accounts had already been depleted.
What of those that do not? If I live with this worry even while I have a job and insurance, how must those without these things feel? How would they pay for the hospital bills? How would they continue to pay the rent while they can't work? We all live on the edge of a knife, just one cough away from personal meltdown.
This is wrong.
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An exchange from a few years ago that has stayed with me:
Me: "I have dental insurance, but I can't really afford the co-pays for some of the services I need to have done."
Person who shall remain nameless: "Well, at least we don't have socialized medicine like in Canada or something. You'd have to wait three months just to get in the door."
Me: "I had to wait six months for my appointment."
For the record, the appointment was not for a routine cleaning, which are usually six months apart; it was to have cavities examined and possibly filled. Six months. Private insurance through my employer only covered one dental office in the entire city, which lends to the long wait time for an appointment, and would only pay for a fraction of what I needed to have done. The dentist suggested that my best option was to drive 150 miles south to the nearest dental college and have the work done by students, since that was more affordable.
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The poster above was created in 1936. It was created by and for the generation of Americans that suffered the hardships of the Great Depression, and then gave all of themselves during WWII. This was the Greatest Generation that we look back to today with respect for their sacrifices, their hard work, and their ideals. This is the generation that brought us many of the social programs that we benefit from today, and have become so much an integral aspect of our society that many often forget that they are social programs at all. And yet we live now with a health care system that stratifies us based on our ability to pay, while people decry the evils of social programs.
I believe that a government is made of and for its people, and it must always act to protect the rights of those people. Private insurance companies have a right to make a profit, but not when it infringes upon the right of the people - all of the people; the healthy and the sick, the rich and the poor, the employed and the unemployed - to have ready, complete, affordable, and equal access to health care. This is not conservative, liberal, moderate, socialist, or any other political category. It is about citizens understanding that we are all stronger when we are all stronger. It is human. It is American.
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