Nyceve has devoted herself, here and elsewhere, to the campaign for single-payer health insurance.
One of her main arguments (besides the basic fairness, efficiency, life-saving and Constitutional "general welfare" aspects inherent in single-payer) is that many of us have junk insurance, and won't know it until something happens that makes us very sick and at the not-tender-at-all mercies of Murder by Spreadsheet types.
Something like a mosquito bite.
The Albany Times Union had a story yesterday about a guy who survived near-death from severe encephalitis.
Steve Taite had insurance, but he also now has a $50,000 bill for whatever his insurance company decided not to cover.
Details, below.
Most of the story is about how harrowing severe encephalitis is.
Taite is lucky to be alive -- he had four grand mal seizures in the hospital, and even after he was out of the hospital and into a rehab facility, the virus (which evidently afflicts less than one New Yorker a year) and the necessary treatments were still trying to kill him.
Taite developed Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a skin reaction to the seizure medication. His skin swelled, turned purple and began sloughing off like a burn victim's. Severe cases often cause blindness or death. He was transferred to the burn unit at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester.
While there, he had a reaction to steroids, Diane Taite said. His organs failed and he was put on a ventilator and life support.
Diane Taite (Steve's wife) searched the Internet for people who suffered California encephalitis and Stevens-Johnson syndrome. She found references to victims, all dead.
Steve Taite survived. He was taken off life support and breathed on his own. Still, it wasn't over. He developed a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection, a drug-resistant infection from the central line catheter in his chest.
He was sent home with antibiotics on July 14. The skin rash came back and he began to swell, gaining 5 pounds in two hours. He had another seizure and was taken to Albany Medical Center Hospital.
So Steve Taite has been through a lot, physically, including a deadly bacterial infection that was, in the current jargon, "hospital-acquired."
And he's also suffering financially.
The insurance bit is only mentioned in one sentence, the third in the story:
Friends and family are holding a fund-raiser Saturday to help pay $50,000 in medical bills the Taite family accumulated over the past two months even though Steve Taite was insured.
Taite is a self-employed landscaper, as such, he probably had to buy health insurance as an individual.
Which, as nyceve has noted many times, is often high-cost and low-coverage.
Taite's treatments for his killer disease easily cost six-figures, maybe more.
Whatever insurance he has covered most of that, but $50,000 is a rather big bill for any small business guy, or indeed anyone who's not a millionaire.
The story did not mention how successful Taite's business is, but it seems to be a small operation out of which he would be lucky to clear $50,000 a year.
Hopefully, the fund-raiser yesterday went well.
But the idea that insured sick people have to fund-raise among their family and friends to pay for hospital and other medical bills, in the richest country in world history, is literally disgraceful.
Update: Thanks for the recs.
This really is a life-and-death issue that affects everyone, and more than gas prices.
For those who want to help out, Taite's address is 3826 Duanesburg Road, Duanesburg, NY 12056-3408