Some of you may have read the diary I wrote last Thursday,
Our healthcare system almost killed baby William.
In a nutshell, this five-week-old baby (now six weeks old) of some very dear friends of mine almost died last week, and it's a perfect example of how screwed up our health care system is.
Well, it gets worse. Not in the case of William's health, which is improving, thank goodness. It illustrates yet more problems with our health care system.
As it turns out, my friends Jill and Peter DO have health insurance for their baby William.
BUT - and this is a big, fucked-up BUT -
William's insurance didn't kick in until yesterday. HUH? Well, those of you who are parents may recall this scenario.
Before I had my son four years ago, I called Blue Cross and Blue Shield (as well as other insurers) in my state to check on coverage for my soon-to-be-born baby. I just assumed that I could get my baby insurance coverage to go into effect the minute he was born.
Wrong.
I could not even apply for the insurance until after the baby was born. At that point, there's the waiting period. Okay, we'll cover your kid, and the coverage will begin on XX date. Now send us money.
(And just try to convince me that insurance companies don't count on the fact that for many overwhelmed new parents, health insurance isn't necessarily on the top of their lists.)
For Peter and Jill, that day was May 1, 2005. Roughly Day Six of William's care. That's six days in pediatric ICU that were not covered by insurance. Of course, since this is all a result of an undetected birth defect, there's no telling what the insurance company will try to pull. But that's yet to be seen, and maybe I'm jumping to unnecessary conclusions since I hate insurance companies.
But the long and short of it is this. For roughly one month or so after the birth of American children, they have no health insurance.
Babies in this country have no coverage. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
In what is supposedly the best country on Earth (rah, rah, America!), we cannot provide our babies with health coverage.
Peter is starting to wonder what is going to happen to their family. My husband spoke to him a little while ago, and that's when we learned that William's insurance kicked in yesterday. Peter suspects that they'll be looking at well over $100,000 in medical bills. Peter wondered if he'd have to declare bankruptcy. Not so fast, my husband said. You'd better check what your buddies up on the hill just passed, he told Peter.
I never thought the bankruptcy legislation would hit home so quickly.
What's frightening is that my friends are not the only ones going through this. Hospital beds are filled right now with middle-class patients who will not be able to pay their bills.
We need universal health coverage in this country. We need it yesterday.
Update: I should clarify that I do not know for sure if Jill and Peter have insurance coverage themselves. Because of the frailty of their lives right now, I'm not going to call and ask them. But I am assuming they don't, and that's why William was not covered until yesterday. If a mother has no insurance when she gives birth, there is nothing to cover the baby when he is born. Peter told my husband that the insurance company wouldn't write a policy until William was two weeks old. My assumption is that when William turned two weeks old, Peter and Jill called, applied for the insurance, and it was set to begin May 1.