Last night, you might have caught the PBS program "Frontline" presenting an insightful and disturbing look at the U.S. health care industry. Titled, "Sick Around America", the one-hour documentary examines how health care in States has become about the bottom dollar, rather than about insuring the ill. There were journalists and industry insiders exposing how health insurance employees were getting bonuses for retroactively rescinding health care coverage to the seriously ill who had filed claims for treatments.
The program talked extensively about everyday people like you and I who work, but are uninsured (that would be me) or are underinsured (that might be you and you wouldn't even know it until a major health issue occurred and your plan decides not to cover your treatments/medications). The most heart-wrenching story was about a young woman who was diagnosed with lupus while in college, only to be dropped from her parents' health insurance upon graduation. In her quest to find subsequent coverage, she continually came up short because no company would insure her for having a "pre-existing condition." After finally paying exorbitant premiums and copays to work with an individualized insurance company, they dropped her when she was admitted to hospital for life-saving treatments. Her bill topped $900,000, which of course, she could not pay. Only after her death a few months later (at the age of 32) did her parents get a letter from the insurance agency indicating that her health insurance should never have been dropped; a mistake had been made.
Anyway, while I could easily go off on a political tirade about the issues surrounding this, and how a lot of people have their heads up their butts rather than admit the American model isn't working and maybe we should (*gasp*) examine how effectively other countries are handling their health care systems, I won't. Instead, I wanted to write about something in the documentary that struck me as a little more personal. One professor who was interviewed talked about how many Americans are making difficult lifestyle choices to insure that they attain or keep their health insurance. She pointed out recent college graduates as well as career professionals who are accepting and staying in jobs below their economic and academic potential because they need a decent health insurance plan. She referred to this as "job locked." She then ruefully went on to talk about people who are getting married when they wouldn't otherwise, or are staying in bad marriages because they can't afford to be without health coverage. This, of course, reminded me of Adam's and my situation, up until the point where she smirked and referred to it as "slob locked." Yeah, that's not quite us...while I would have happily stayed with Adam the rest of my life without getting married, I was also quite okay with the idea of having a small Key West wedding sometime in the near future. I guess, for me, it was a non-issue. Getting married in our house last year was ideal for me (little stress, little fanfare) but admittedly, we did it with the intention of securing health care. But despite this "lifestyle choice" we made, there's nothing about it that would indicate that we are two slobs locked into a marriage to each other. Quite the opposite, we are happily married and the health benefits are a side bonus.
In any case, if you're at all interested in this national crisis (these are not my words, they are the words of industry experts who are looking at the downfall of national health as well as the economy), you might look at last night's program, which you find in the link above. "Frontline" has a tendency to be quite fair and balanced, so whatever your political views, I think you'll find something interesting and educational in the program.
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