The Arizona Republic reported yesterday that 1.3 million Arizonans -- a large portion of which are childless adults that will soon lose their state-sponsored Medicaid coverage -- are going to face increasing challenges accessing health care in the coming months and years.
Like a global health textbook discussing health care in Guatemala or Cambodia, the Republic's article details where the uninsured might turn to find affordable -- errr...still pretty damn expensive by the standard of any other country, developed or undeveloped, on the face of the Earth -- medical and dental care.
This has been said so many times over that we are probably deaf to its impact, but I will say it again: it is an abomination that the richest country on the face of the Earth feels no obligation to guarantee its citizens the right to life.
Why will we spend hundreds of millions of dollars protecting flyers with body scans, but not the same amount of money protecting the poor and unemployed from vicious viruses and germs?
Why will we spend hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding other countries that we have bombed to oblivion, but we will not spend the same amount of money to ensure our children do not lose their teeth to rot and decay?
Arizona Republicans have no moral authority to discuss health care -- there is no health care system in Arizona. I dare Jan Brewer to tell me, or anyone else, that the government of Arizona is any better than that of Mexico. Indeed, it is worse. Because, at least in Mexico, the government aspires to provide universal health care to all citizens, even if it is not always successful. America -- and Arizona in particular -- has the disgusting mindset that health care is not something that people deserve. That it is like a new Nintendo Wii or pair of shoes.
Arizona reflects the worst of our current -- and future -- health care crisis:
Layoffs and unemployment have thrown more people into the world of the uninsured.
Fewer than half of Arizonans now get health insurance through an employer, the lowest level in a decade, according to census figures.
Some individuals who lose jobs find themselves without public or private insurance options. In some cases, a person drawing $240 a week in unemployment makes too much to get insurance through the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state's Medicaid program, known as AHCCCS. But the $240 is typically not enough to pay for health insurance.
That forces many to sign up for plans that cover only catastrophic injuries or to go without insurance at all.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/...
Where do these people turn? To charity...or bankruptcy. Charity, however, is not a system. Charity will not provide you with the reliable care that is necessary to live a happy, healthy, prosperous life free of pain. Charity means people fall through the cracks. For example, dental care for the poor in Arizona is sometimes accessed via lottery:
The state's Medicaid program does not cover dental care, and many people with conventional medical insurance also lack dental coverage.
Because demand for dental care is so great, St. Vincent de Paul selects its dental patients based on a lottery system, which gives the winners comprehensive dental care and treatment of lingering problems such as oral infections.
Believe it or not, untreated dental infections can and do kill. Or, just cause a heck of a lot of suffering. Oh, but Canada doesn't provide dental care as part of its universal system? Well, when everything else is paid for, it's a heck of a lot easier to pay for a trip to the dentist now and then.
The personal tragedies in Arizona will continue to mount as a result of this cruel non-system foisted upon us by the Jan Brewers, Arizona's Republican governor, and Mark Bertolinis and Angela Bralys, Aetna and WellPoint CEOs, respectively, of the world. The following anecdote is a long one, but worth reading:
Phoenix-area residents find it much more challenging when dealing with a major illness such as cancer.
Carmen Ferrara, 38, of Tempe, found himself in such a situation.
An account manager at a shipping company, Ferrara did not get health insurance from his employer because he was an independent contractor and he could not afford to buy private insurance.
That left Ferrara scrambling for answers last fall when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
"It has been just one obstacle after another," Ferrara said.
Ferrara quit his job because of complications from the disease and raised $2,500 from family and friends to pay for surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. Doctors recommended a follow-up CT scan and a treatment regimen of radiation and possibly chemotherapy, but the surgery broke Ferrara financially, and he could not raise an up-front payment of about $5,000 that a radiation oncologist required before Ferrara could start treatment.
Unable to raise money for his treatment and without income, Ferrara enrolled in the state's Medicaid program. It look him several weeks and lots of paperwork to document his limited finances, but he received approval last month. That gave him the health-insurance coverage he needed for obtaining radiation and potentially chemotherapy treatments.
He doesn't yet know the extent that his cancer may have spread, and he regrets that he did not start treatment sooner. What's more, he knows he likely has a limited window to get treatment. He is a childless adult, so that puts him among the state's low-income childless adults who will be dropped from the state's Medicaid program if the Legislature's cuts are implemented.
"I know I should have health insurance," Ferrara said. "I just can't afford it."
Life is precious -- you just get one and then you're done. How can we call ourselves a compassionate -- dare I say Christian nation -- if we allow corporate interests and toxic politics to perpetuate suffering like that detailed above?
The truth is that the so-called "ObamaCare" legislation is better than nothing, but just barely. It is the equivalent of taking a family without a home and giving them a corrugated-tin shack.
The battle for single-payer care must remain strong -- in places like California and Vermont.
I was disheartened to read people from so-called "red states" in the Kos comments arguing that the Obama administration's waiver program is a bad move. I respectfully disagree -- the only way to create a just and equitable health care system in this country is by strangling the bloodsucking, evil big-profit insurance companies every place that we can. If California, Vermont and Oregon develop single-payer systems, it's game over for big-profit insurance in this country. And, yes, Jan Brewer will be forced to consider how her state will provide health care for millions of people without the bloodsucking beasts at Aetna hawking policies.
I said this before and I'll say it again: a public option or single-payer scheme anywhere is a victory for ending the abusive big-profit insurance industry everywhere.
And, yes, that includes Arizona.
What follows is vaguely off topic, but demonstrative of the fire in my belly that develops each and every time I read a story such as the one in featured in this diary. I think about where the blame lies -- and get pissed.
To the people at Aetna, WellPoint, Humana, United Healthcare and America's Health Insurance Plans reading this, those individuals who believe a system whereby insurers hit a sweet profit margin by raising prices high enough to force the sick to drop coverage (yes, this is a bit of disgusting history):
In a conference call with investment analysts to discuss the company's third-quarter earnings, Chair and CEO Ron Williams told analysts, "The pricing we put in place for 2009 turned out to not really be what we needed to achieve the results and margins that we had historically been delivering."
Well, you people are absolutely disgusting. Let the folks at AHIP and the big-profit insurers hear you -- and hear you loud and clear.
AHIP and the big-profit insurers have declared war on the American people. It's time to "sleep in" at the United States Capitol and our state houses to demand that our politicians defend us from these enemies.