The
story
yesterday on NPR about Missouri cutting Medicaid has been reverberating
through my head. I can't get the words of the woman who works for $6 an hour
and who will now have to give up her health coverage. But if she works more hours,
she'd lose the coverage for her three children. And I can't get the somewhat
rough voice of the woman who can't work due to her medical condition, and whose
coverage would end under Missouri's proposed cuts.
Outrage. I am outraged because there are two issues at stake. One is the fact
that a country as rich as the United States can choose to provide quality health
care for all its citizens and workers. We live in the richest country in the
richest period of human history. Being rich means you can do certain things.
And one of those things ought to be providing quality health care for everyone.
Period.
The other issue at stake is the issue of welfare. Welfare. Welfare. Welfare.
There, I said the "w" word. And I meant it. How could "welfare" not be anything
but a good and noble concept? As in "provide for the general welfare"? The
well-being of all America's citizens and workers is a noble good, and since
we are so rich we can provide for it without giving much up. Even if we were
a poor nation, the right thing to do would be to spread our poverty around
so that we'd be sticking together and helping each other out as a community. It
irks me that the value, the moral good, of welfare is somehow regarded as something
bad.
Welfare is personal for me. It saved the life of a very close relative and
friend. My cousin (who in my family is like a brother) has bipolar disorder. When he
is in the midst of his disease he becomes psychotic. His illness is severe.
It took him a few years to figure out that he was bipolar. During this time
he went in and out of mental wards four times. The first time he asked my brother
(at whose house he was living) to take him in, because he had been thinking
of killing himself.
When I got the call that my cousin was in the hospital after considering suicide
I didn't know the details. My mother and my aunt had each left voice mail.
So I thought that my cousin was in the hospital, injured - perhaps near death.
I have never experienced as much sadness as I did in that moment. I fell to
the floor. I had to pull together all of my strength to call my spouse to get
some help - to get a ride to the hospital. The sadness was intensified because
September 11th had only been a week before - and I was just pulling myself
up from the shock of the week before.
It is amazing how the brain works. I pulled myself up from the floor, stopped
wailing and became totally calm. I called my spouse at his work. I calmlyt explained what was the matter.
I asked for a ride to the hospital. I hung up. And then I went to type a letter for work (thank God I didn't send it - it was a total mess). My
spouse took a taxi home from work, and we drove together to the hospital. All
the way there I was calm - but still didn't know if my cousin was hurt or not.
Life is relative in many ways. And so it was good news that my cousin was
merely depressed and suicidal. He had asked for help before he had done anything
to hurt himself. But he was, nonetheless, in a mental ward. He was with "crazy"
people. My mind raced to figure out who and what was to blame. So did the minds
of everyone in my family. But it wasn't all that simple, as we'd discover over
the next three years.
My cousin did not get better after that first trip to the hospital. He had
been hiding from all of us the voices, the illusions, the images and the thoughts
of killing others, killing himself. But after his first trip it became a lot
more difficult to hid all of that. We found out that in the summer when he
had temporarily moved out of my brother's house that he had spent the summer
living in trash barrels and experiencing and hyper-mental life on the streets.
The next time he went to the hospital he was totally psychotic. And I was
the one who took him there. I convinced him he needed to go. I sat in the
intake room and told the nurse that there was no way in hell (I was more diplomatic
about it) that we were going to leave the ward to get checked in according
to procedures via the emergency room. My cousin did not want to "consent" to
going, and it was I who told him that he trusted me and that I would make sure
that he was safe. I helped the "system" take him in.
And the next time it was I who called the ambulance, who talked to the police,
who made the choice that my cousin would go through the voluntary system -
and not the committed system. It was I who witnessed my cousin on the bathroom
floor, telling the cats carrying cocaine and spy messages to go away, worrying
about the secret messages in the plumbing and hitting the wall so hard that
his hand broke a hole.
But this story is about not about the pain of untreated mental illness. It
is rather about the wonders of the welfare system. You see, the welfare system
not only provided the care that my cousin needed to discover why his brain
functioned like it did, and to discover the medicine that would give him control
over his brain and life - but it provided him with the independence and means
to do what it took to get back his life. To become well.
My family started by providing him a rent free place to live (my brother's
house) and by paying for his medicine. But not only would be difficult to sustain
$1000 a month in medical costs, but it was not possible to sustain the costs
and to provide comprehensive mental health care out of pocket. So went to the
state for help. Additionally, I thought that it was important that there be
no "family-strings" attached to the support my cousin would receive. He needed
to be taking care of himself, to be free of too much influence and power from
non-neutral parties. (Remember, we were all still looking for the "cause" to
blame - there were some pretty big family dynamics at play.)
What the state provided was incredible. Yes, it was difficult to work through
the maze. And it helped that we had the resources and the education and the
time to do it. It also helped that we were white and middle class - and that
I had experience working as a welfare advocate. The system is broken. But for
us, this broken system came through. And that points to how wonderful its intent
and hope really is.
First my cousin got medical coupons, which enabled him to get comprehensive
mental health services. He then got emergency aid and food stamps. This enabled
him to not work - which he could do since he was psychotic. With his medicine
paid for, with his health care being provided with no family-strings attached, and
with the stress of working gone, my cousin started doing the heavy lifting
of getting well. It was not easy. He went to the hospital two more times.
But now when he went to the hospital it was to a quality center - not a mental
health "emergency room." And it was in coordination with outpatient care. And
he left with economic and medical security.
Eventually he moved off of food stamps and emergency aid and onto Social Security.
He was now able to move out on his own. He was now able to get a part time job.
And then his medical team discovered a drug that worked for him. At $15 a
daily dose, this miracle was only possible thanks to the state - thanks to
welfare. And within a year he was working full time at a law firm, during his
trial period. And now he lives in a nice home, has a good job with benefits,
is happy and is fully treated. Thank God for welfare.
grassrootsgrowth.org