My wife had cancer first. She was diagnosed in 1994. The small business where she worked at the time lost their insurance over it. She hasn’t been insured for 19 years. The only bright spot: At least we haven’t spent the decades wondering if something was lurking that regular followups might have found, if only we could afford them (the indications that your leukemia is back include full-body bruising and blood coming out your ears when you floss).
In January 2005 her mammogram showed a mass. Luckily she had a baseline test on file; the radiologist that Planned Parenthood referred her to (paid by the YWCA program for women's health screening for the uninsured) matched up the two pictures and figured out it was nothing by the next Tuesday. That was the longest weekend of my life.
This is what it means to be uninsured: the news that your 5 year old may lose a parent in elementary school takes a backseat to ‘we’re going to lose the house...unless my wife dies quickly’.
Now I have melanoma, the cancer that lurks. I’m now on a followup schedule that continues until a) I die of something else, or b) the lurking semi-solid cells that are statistically likely to be somewhere in my body hit a switch and start to multiply again.
I was diagnosed in Sept. 2011. Because my state had already implemented the part of the ACA that requires insurance companies to continue policies at similar rates EVEN IF the individuals on them make claims–-not something we expected, after our earlier experience–-I’m still insured. My not-for-profit health plan is slamming all individual policy holders into one big high-premium, high-deductible HMO next month so we get to shop.
We’re going to buy an exchange plan that puts our family on one deductible and out of pocket max, for the first time ever, next week.
We can afford any of these plans. We have fifty-seven choices. Sure, some of them aren't appropriate for our family's health profile (rare cancer=must have some out of network coverage; hearing aids for kid must be covered, etc.).
Some of these plans cost more than I'd prefer to spend, once we add up the premium and deductible--which we anticipate meeting sometime in Feb. 2014, with the backlog of preventive and screening that Mrs Phoenix hasn't had access to since before PET scans were invented.
But we get to buy insurance, in a market that has to take our money and has to pay for the health care we may need.
Our business has never been big enough to offer insurance. We knew from our experience in 1994 that individual health plans (fewer than 50 people) would take the premiums and run if we ever made a large claim, so we didn’t bother to offer the option of "insurance in name only" to our staff. Obviously this has affected recruiting at our company.
Here's something exciting about the ACA: In the past 4 weeks, I have received 5 resumes from exactly the kind of people we would like to hire more of. All say they’ll be available around the 1st of the year. Demographically, they’re very different from the resumes I’ve seen over 15 years in this business. The candidates are younger; looking for fewer hours; more experienced at our largest competitors. I think the trend I'm seeing is reflective of ACA's changes to the market for health insurance. We're getting applicants who want to work 15-25 hours a week, now that they can afford to leave Big Ugly Corp. because they can buy health insurance on their own.
As a parent, a spouse and a small business owner, I know that being sick is awful; being a caregiver is awful; cancer sucks; and the HealthCare.gov site needs improvement.
All that said, I would carry the Congresscritters and President who got us these solutions across a river of acid on my back to keep them.
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Monday Night Cancer Club is a Daily Kos group focused on dealing with cancer, primarily for cancer survivors and caregivers, though clinicians, researchers, and others with a special interest are also welcome. Volunteer diarists post Monday evenings between 7-8 PM ET on topics related to living with cancer, which is very broadly defined to include physical, spiritual, emotional and cognitive aspects. Mindful of the controversies endemic to cancer prevention and treatment, we ask that both diarists and commenters keep an open mind regarding strategies for surviving cancer, whether based in traditional, Eastern, Western, allopathic or other medical practices. This is a club no one wants to join, in truth, and compassion will help us make it through the challenge together.