Insurance Impasse

It was about a joke and a half away from being a Saturday Night Live skit.

The three hours I spent on the phone with government officials, attempting to sort out the knotted ball of bureaucratic red tape that is health care reform.  The fact that the state didn't add my husband's income to my application, despite my reporting it with copies of his paycheck.  The friendly confusion of the three separate employees who agreed that my income should allow me a tax break, but who couldn't seem to understand why the system wasn't permitting it.  The frustration of trying to find an insurance carrier that my OB-GYN and PCP both accept (there isn't one within my price range, BTW).  

Yes, it was what those old-time folks would have called a "laugh riot".

And this all happened after the bugs were "worked out" of the computer system.

This isn't about President Obama.  Everything, both negative and positive, that can possibly be said about health care reform has already been said.  And tweeted, and blogged about, and liked and shared on Facebook.  My tiny voice, screeching about my awful experience, will be lost in the cacophony of compliments and complaints that are already swirling around the Affordable Health Care Act.  But I still feel like I need to speak my mind.

I don't consider myself a particularly political person.  I identify as a conservative individual, generally, but not always and not necessarily a Republican.  Something my pastor always says rings so true in times of bipartisan mudslinging: "Our answer lies in no party, but in Christ alone."  In fact, when "Obamacare" was initially announced, I was cautiously hopeful.  My mother was one of those people who kept "slipping through the cracks" of the healthcare system.  Unemployed due to medical conditions, she could never prove that she was physically disabled to the satisfaction of Medical Assistance (hiatal hernias do not often cause physical impairment, but hers had been so severe it did not respond to traditional OTC treatments and ultimately killed her). She applied for aid with Catholic Charities and other organizations but never "qualified" for any type of help.  Without insurance, she refused to go to a doctor, and never got the treatment she needed.  And then she died.

I'm not blaming the system for her death, not entirely.  Much of the fault, of course, was hers.  She could have gone to the ER and insurance be damned.  What were the bill collectors going to get from her?  She literally had nothing to her name.  No house, no car, no checking or savings accounts.  Nothing.  She had thought her daughters would be saddled with any bills she had when she died, so she refused to incur any. Sadly, she didn't know that legally, in the state of Kentucky, her bills would have died with her.  Her survivors (me, actually, since mine was the signature on all the documents) owed nothing to the hospital in which she passed away, despite their many hours of life-saving attempts and round-the-clock care.

I don't rightly know every effort my mom made to get financial help.  Maybe she just told me she tried, and never really did.  Maybe she didn't want to bother because she thought she would be denied anyway.  Maybe the process intimidated or frustrated her.  I will never know.  But it upsets me to think that she wasn't alone in her quest for coverage.  I wanted to think that an act of the government could have helped people in her position.  But how do you change the direction of a great big, lumbering, bloated and self-important beast that's been plodding along for dozens of years?  Can you reason with it?  Can you destroy it?  How do you even begin? 

One of the things I learned during my time as a mid-level manager with various companies is that, if you're going to point out a problem to your superiors, it helps to have a potential solution in mind to offer them.

This time, I don't.  I have no idea how to fix this.  I know that bi-partisan politics is making our country's health insurance woes much worse, because along with every "helpful" suggestion that is offered comes a heaping helping of stiff-necked pride.  No one's ever proud when compromise is reached and the country benefits.  Just when one side "wins".  

Guess what, y'all?  We're all losing here.  I am generally proud to be an American, but this whole debacle has us looking like a scrappy junkyard dog endlessly chasing its tail.

I feel like we - all of us in this country - are being required to eat at a certain restaurant, but the menu doesn't take into account people with allergies, or diabetes, or religious restrictions.  And the cook is on vacation.  And the waitstaff was just hired and isn't fully trained yet.  And there are rats in the kitchen.  And cockroaches.

I think you get the idea.

I just wish I knew how to make things better.  For all of us.