My father spent January 2010 in the hospital, with kidney issues and various other complaints. He'd been down visiting me, and went into the hospital the morning after his two week trip here, so we initially put the problems down to fatigue from the trip.
I knew he hadn't been feeling well (not surprising for someone who was 80, thirteen years after he'd had open heart surgery - actually a bit amazing he was still alive), as he'd been much less interested than usual in taking photographs, although we had made it out to Lancaster (where the rolling landscape usually caught his attention and photographer's eye) and down to Delaware (where the Chihuly plates at the art museum were a favorite subject). On that visit, he'd also commented to me that it is a shame that our society doesn't approve of a person taking one pill to end it all when he/she feels the time has come.
Unfortunately, the dialysis for his kidneys and the medications for an infection he'd picked up proved to be too much for his already weak (physical) heart. He had a heart attack after four weeks in the hospital, and died one year ago today.
It's been a very rough year in many ways. Settling the estate. Doing Dad's taxes. Not having his shoulder to cry on when my divorce was final or I had to put the cat who had been my companion for more than two decades to sleep (five days after Dad died - talk about adding insult to injury!). Dealing with all his photographs and books..... lots and lots of books and photos.
But there's one thing we have not had to worry about.
Medical bills.
No, Dad wasn't Canadian (although much of his extended family is), nor was he a British citizen (although he likely could have been, as his parents were born in Scotland).
Fortunately for my family, my mother had been the chair of a division for twenty five years at a college that is part of SUNY. While she never earned the salary she would have if she'd gone into banking/finance/law, she had excellent health insurance, and it was almost free for both of them as long as she was alive, as she had been hired as a professor long enough ago that she was grandfathered into a very low employee contribution. After Mum died, Dad paid a reasonable premium to keep his coverage.
So the final bill for Dad's month long hospital stay/other end-of-life medical care came to something like $850 -- and about $300 of that was a month's worth of television access in the hospital (so that doesn't really count......).
Among his many other pursuits, Dad was a letter writer. I've got a couple boxes of his letters to politicians and newspapers to sort though someday. Some of them are old enough that they date to the mid 1960s and start 'Now that I have a daughter, it has become clear to me......' He had some pet topics - global warming/climate change was one, as was a rational approach to evolution and what 'theory' actually means to scientists (he was a physicist).
His other favorite topic was health care. He was an early and strong proponent of a single payer system, even though he had such good insurance coverage. He would go on (and on, and on, and on....) whenever he possibly could introduce the topic in conversation. Dad fully realized that he and Mum were quite privileged (at least compared to most Americans) to have such good and affordable health care, and he was compassionate/liberal enough to believe that all Americans should have access to the security he had for medical costs. He'd seen how much better his coverage was than his brother's (an engineer whose private employer was fairly stingy on insurance; my uncle had medical issues very similar to Dad's - the whole genetics thing.... but his costs were much, much higher....). Dad had also watched and learned from how a cousin's similar heart issues were dealt with in Canada.
I debated writing this diary, as I'm not looking for sympathy. I just want to encourage those fighting for a saner health care system -- that the goal of health care stability for all Americans is a noble cause. It was a tremendous relief not to have to deal with massive bills when struggling with grief. I hope someday soon, when a sane system is in place, with people paying their fair share over the course of a lifetime, everyone in this country faces not much more than a final bill for hospital television service when a family member dies.