19 September 2009
My Reasons for Wanting a National Health Service for All
I have had to import medication from Canada because it was more affordable a few years back, I have too much money in my remaining IRA investments intended for retirement, accordingly, I have been spending down those IRA savings to afford my living expenses and health care expenses since 1991. I cannot access my veterans benefits nor can I receive coverage under Medicaid because of their means tests. And others have worse challenges than I have. How many parents discover that their child must wait two years for Medicare eligibility if, God forbid, their child develops an immune system disease or has brain damage from meningitis? The parents' private insurance coverage may alter or cancel their family's health insurance and, assuming there is an income-producing person in the household, the parents cannot afford the necessary health care costs until Medicare enrolls the child. The child would be eligible for disability income if they meet the criteria established by Social Security. Someone with lupus, for example, can work, live normally or a little slower and with greater fatigue, yet any physician office visit charges, lab charges and medication charges have to be paid by the afflicted person in addition to housing, food, utilities, cell phones, Internet access costs of daily living. Suddenly the afflicted person, before Medicare coverage, has new claims on the paycheck that may amount to more than the take-home pay for the month.
Often, I should note, the providers will have a sliding scale fee structure so a person without health car coverage should ask the physician or lab or pharmacist about such arrangements. They do not want to charge full rates if they see that they will not be paid anything. So, we ask for financial arrangement that help, but still may overwhelm one's budget.
It seems that every federal program for the good of Americans, including veterans health care, requires the recipient to be impoverished. Find me one that does not- for health care. Try living on the SSDI stipends for shelter, food, transportation and miscellaneous expenses of living. Because I am single, my net $1,700 monthly SSDI income puts be above the poverty level.
I know the health care system very well, because of my executive role for a major university medical center, research laboratories, patient care in two hospitals, administrative process and budgeting, and construction of new laboratories or hospitals or upgrading facilities in place. I led the office that evaluated those operations for 12 years, until I could not handle the stress of my job mentally or physically. Is it not ironic that I cannot make a living from providing guidance and opinion, because my PTSD of institutional politics and my inability to reconcile political and reality perspectives do not allow for full-time employment. You see, my disability prevents me from focusing on a subject or tasks of a job for more than two hours after which I must disengage completely from work type situations and discussions. My former employer, Stanford University, went psychiatrist hunting to avoid paying me any disability income and access to other benefits,even though their first psychiatrist and my psychiatrist validated the nature and effects of my disability. It was several years before I could even think about taking the institutional and legal steps to restore them. I would have difficulty today, psychologically, making the effort to claim disability benefits to which I was entitled as an employee.
I have two more years to go before I will have depleted my IRA that had been created to supplement my pension income from an employer. I was not able to work long enough to generate any pensions, so I will become entirely dependent on government programs for life and pursuit of happiness. There should have been a point after which my IRA did not have to be used for health care related expenses. For me, a national health service with a single payer, would have enabled me to remain in my home and lead a decent, middle class life without having to access any future government programs. My paying out-of-pocket my entire investment portfolio value cash in distributions could have been avoided had we had a national health service for everyone, regardless of income, assets, job, etc. In retrospect, what I should have done is go to France or Italy in 1993, after being enrolled in Medicare A and B, and used my Social Security and Medicare benefits as my contribution to their national health systems. We have bi-lateral treaties with other countries that enable such exchanges, depending on the country where you pay income taxes.
My own health suffered from trying to do too much and the cost of ongoing psychotherapy and associated medications were depleting my IRA at a rate higher than my rent. Another trip to Italy, using the points awarded from charging so much medicine costs, convinced me there was a better way to live, a way without worrying about going broke paying for health care while living on my SSDI for all other living costs. What delayed my obtaining the visas was gathering the required paperwork and submitting my application. What takes most people an hour or two on the phone or filling out forms with accompanying support documents, takes me weeks and months to do. This post has already consumed ten hours today and additional hours of editing just to arrive at this draft.
Now, I may not have sufficient financial resources to move to Italy which still has a much better approach to health care than does the country of my birth and that I defended.
Until a single-payer, like Medicare for all, demonstrates that this country puts the health of its citizens before the profits of private insurance companies and the pharmaceutical manufacturers, I don't see myself as letting go of this issue and my anger.
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