This is a fundraiser for my friend Kristy, who’s Exhibit A in why the American healthcare system and economy are in searing need of reform.
Kristy has been in the hospital 8 (eight) times since late October. And should’ve been hospitalized more times than that, but she refused, so she could work to meet basic expenses.
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She’s had recurrent kidney infections, resulting in the loss of one kidney.
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She had abdominal surgery to remove a mass from her colon. It was feared this mass would be malignant, but thankfully the biopsy showed it was not.
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She sustained third-degree burns from spilling boiling grease on her chest, requiring skin grafts, and treatment of subsequent infections.
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She severely broke her wrist, requiring orthopedic surgery and the insertion of two metal pins.
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Now the infection has returned in her remaining kidney. She just got out of the hospital again and is now back on outpatient dialysis twice a week.
Kristy has insurance, through one of her two crappy poverty-wage jobs, but when she misses work due to illness or injury, just the insurance premium can be more than her entire paycheck. (Neither of her jobs has any paid sick time.) And it's crappy insurance:
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Dialysis copay is $223 per dialysis session.
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Pharmacy copay for outpatient meds frequently runs $170 or more per prescription. Her doctor says the cheap antibiotics won’t do the job, she has to have the more exotic ones to save her kidney.
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Copay for each office visit is $125.
In a typical week—if she’s not in the hospital—Kristy has two dialysis sessions, an outpatient appointment, and a new prescription. So that’s about $746 in an average week for medical care alone—without even touching food, utilities, transportation to and from work, or home medical supplies like bandages and antibiotic ointment.
Our state, Georgia, has not expanded Medicaid. So if Kristy can’t make her copays and pay for her home medical supplies, she doesn’t get care.
A charitable foundation has loaned Kristy money for ongoing care for two of her conditions. But she has to repay the loans, two payments a month of $125 each—now, immediately. No waiting for her other conditions to improve. If she doesn’t make the loan payments, the foundation stops paying for her ongoing care for those two conditions.
The charity doesn’t cover the ongoing kidney infection.
One of Kristy’s jobs pays $10 an hour; the other pays $12.80 an hour. The picture is her doing tech support from home, the $10-an-hour job. Her other job is driving a van. She can’t park the van at home, so she has to commute to & from the van company HQ for every shift. A bus pass that covers both MARTA and CobbLinc, the two metro-Atlanta public transit systems involved in her commute, is $135 a month.
Kristy has missed, and is continuing to miss, a ton of work. At times she has refused going back in the hospital for IV antibiotics, trying to fight the infections in her skin grafts and remaining kidney with outpatient oral antibiotics instead—so she could continue working.
If not for friends and family chipping in everything they could for the last 8 months, Kristy would be dead. But most of the people willing and able to help Kristy also have poverty-wage jobs. They just can't do it all. Anything you can spare for Kristy’s GoFundMe would be appreciated.
Some of the information on Kristy’s GoFundMe is old—from last year. Kristy has been just too exhausted to update it all. The information in this diary is current.
Thank you for anything you can do for Kristy.
And please remember: when we get into these debates about healthcare systems, minimum wage, government spending, paid sick leave—these have real-life consequences. For people like Kristy, politics is actually a matter of life and death. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.