We've all had the moments that the health care debate got personal. My parents premiums have been on an upward spiral for years. Two close family friends are doctors fighting for single payer. I'm on a "car crash and cancer" health plan right now, lucky enough to be on a temporary visa in Germany where health care is a right, not a luxury. But this one hits closer than all that.
My sister was diagnosed with a 4-inch ovarian cyst.
I'm told that it's fairly common, and eminently curable. But of course, nothing like this is ever SAFE. She might need medication, she might need surgery, she might need a long hospital stay.
My sister is a college graduate, a talented musician and artist with a degree in architecture. She worked in New York for a few years at a small business, paying the bills on a closet in Brooklyn with her boyfriend, a great guy who was lucky enough to have health insurance, and with a domestic partnership was able to cover her for a little while. Then the economy went pear-shaped and they headed west, taking little internships, sustainable development jobs, staying with friends, making ends meet.
My sister has never had health insurance of her own since she graduated from Dalhousie University in Canada. The small business in Brooklyn couldn't give its employees health insurance because it was too expensive. A private plan was a joke, a high-deductible money sink.
And now she's in Colorado, with a significant disease and no health insurance. Luckily, LUCKILY, she found a clinic to treat migrant workers, where a nurse practitioner diagnosed the problem that had been causing such pain. She registered as a migrant worker, and as long as she doesn't leave Colorado, she can probably get what she needs without losing everything she has. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.
My mother called Anthem, to see if she could get her 25-year-old daughter covered under her plan. The response was a polite, kind, even compassionate, "Fat fucking chance".
And you see, even if she does get what she needs this time, without health care reform, every time she tries to get health insurance, from now on for the rest of her long life, she will get the same response: "Fat fucking chance".
This is our system. This is the American way of life. Skilled, intelligent, hard-working people, on the roulette wheel.
Black six, black six, c'mon black six. Momma has an ovarian cyst.