Flat Earth, healthy tobacco, status quo health care — all wrong
I wrote a story last week about how COBRA, the 1986 law that allows people who lose their jobs to keep their insurance, is inadequate. (http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009901100308).
Well, the Heritage Foundation noticed and sent me an e-mail this morning offering me a source on the other side. This is their source and her quote in the Washington Post:
But Nina Owcharenko, a health policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said it would be wiser to offer unemployed Americans a broad range of health insurance options, including high-deductible private policies or new state-based programs.
Given how expensive COBRA is, she said, alternatives would “save the individual money and save taxpayer money.”
I won’t be calling Nina.
As a reporter, I have to be fair. But sometimes, there’s right and there’s wrong, and I don’t feel obligated to give voice to what’s wrong. We no longer quote people who say tobacco is good for you, that psychiatric illness is actually caused by demons or that the Earth is flat.
To say that the private sector can solve the health care crisis without help from the federal government is wrong. A high-deductible insurance policy wouldn’t have saved Mike’s life — in fact, because of his high risk of cancer, he couldn’t get private health insurance.
The state? Medicaid made him separate from his wife to get care and that was only after he was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer and it had recurred.
My benchmark is this: Would it have saved Mike’s life?
Nothing done yet would have. He needed a $3,000 colonoscopy and was denied it repeatedly. He was between 18 and 64, so there was nothing for him.
So, give me this: Allow everyone access to lifesaving diagnostic tests and basic health care.
But tell me that the private sector can take care of it with no help — or regulation — from government and I’ll tell you to go jump off the edge of the Earth. And take your tobacco with you.
Patient Pals & Family Friends
Life o' Mike has a new peer support program for people newly diagnosed with chronic or serious illness or with a new disability and their caregivers.
Patient Pals are people who have experience with various illnesses and disabilities, who can help someone newly diagnosed or with a new disability work through the fear, frustration, confusion and grief often experienced in the first few months.
Family Friends are there to help caregivers and other family members grow into their new role.
People with new illness or disability fare better when they have a role model -- someone who can help them negotiate their new path in life.
We need volunteers, who are asked to donate a minimum of one hour a week. Training is free and includes information on active listening, ways to help and when to know more help is needed.
And of course, we need funding.
To learn more, call Leslie Boyd at 828-243-6712 or e-mail lifeomike@gmail.com.
When I turned 23, my healthcare coverage was discontinued since I was no longer a student. I am not insurable because I am bipolar and require medications each month that will prevent me from doing harm to myself and others. So we had to sign me up for COBRA, at $357 a month. My new medication is $300 without insurance, and that\’s monthly. My once monthly visits to the psychiatrist would probably be $200 a visit, and $125 with sessions with my therapist. Apparently because I have a disease in which I have no control over that I was genetically pre-dispositioned I am no longer human and deserving of a stable livelihood.