A Cry for Help: My Experience with the Current Health Insurance Crisis

For months, I'd been aware it was there - you can't find a lump on your body and then forget about it. You can't pretend it's not there. Your fingers wander to it constantly, checking it, worrying over it, checking to see if it was larger.

It began as a small lump at my throat but I didn't go to the doctor. Not having medical insurance and being a single mother of two, I didn't have money to spare for doctor bills or the various tests they would probably run. I'd lost my faith in doctors several years previous, when I was on Medicaid and had been forced to switch from my family doctor to some HMO approved office - I'd been undergoing treatment for herniated disks in my back but, when I went to see what the new doctors would suggest, they did an x-ray, declared that they saw absolutely nothing from with my back, and wrote me a prescription for painkillers.

Narcotic painkillers to treat the pain in a back that was, by their reasoning, perfectly fine. Right. I just didn't have the time or the money to waste on another wild goose chase.

So I didn't go to the doctor, even as the lump grew - the size of a golf ball and bigger still. I would go to get my hair cut and wanted to cry as I watched the hairdresser look all bewildered when my hair came out in abundance, sticking to her comb and her fingers. I knew how bad it was... it tangled around my fingers and clogged up the shower every day, scaring me into thinking I'd end up going bald eventually. I think, perhaps, the forgetting was the worst.

The simplest of tasks, at times, I would completely forget how to do. We all lose track of what we were doing when we walk into a room, but this was a never-ending event with me. I began to live off Post-It notes, just to do the basic things I needed to do. I was exhausted all the time. I felt miserable. I felt like I was dying.

It was a completely unrelated incident that finally forced me in to see the doctor. Thankfully, my mother loaned me the $100+ it took, just to get the appointment in to be seen, and I went. The poor doctor was bombarded with questions as soon as I got in there and I showed her all the different problems. She, in turn, ordered tests.

Blood work, scans, uptake tests. Even with the patient pay discount, I was already in the hole for over $3,000.00 by the end of my first day. Next, I would be sent to specialists. More blood work. Radiation therapy. Again with the blood work. I eventually ended up reapplying for Medicaid and they picked up any bills I had that were over my patient co-pay of $416.00 a month.

What single mother, paying for rent, groceries, and a payment on a 9 year old van, has $416.00 to spare? Even when I applied for assistance, the caseworker asked me how I managed to live. Paycheck to paycheck, just like so many other Americans out there - we manage until something like illness or the loss of a job comes along and yanks one of those checks out from under us. All it takes is one little slip and it all snowballs out of control.

But I shouldn't complain - At least it was something. It was better than the proverbial kick in the teeth and, after over a year's worth of blood work and tests, I'm told the growth in my throat is under control and they believe the radiation was successful. So there was a happy ending to that part of the story - I just have to go in and have a yearly checkup.

Of course, there's still the issue that I haven't been able to go in to the other specialist that the doctor had wanted me to see. Especially not now that my patient co-pay is over $1000.00 per month. My caseworker tells me this is because my son is 15 - not old enough to work, still in school but, apparently, self-sufficient enough to warrant his own $1000.00 a month doctor co-pay.

Not a day goes by that I don't pray that nothing happens, that no one gets sick - not only for the well-being of my family and myself, but also because I know I'll never be able to dig myself out of the pile of bills that are sure to be dumped on my head.

Meanwhile, as I write this, my mother is trying to figure out how to purchase her medication. Her husband passed on several years ago, but she had insurance through General Motors, where he had worked for more than 25 years. One day, out of the blue, she just received notice that they were no longer paying for all her meds; so this 70+ year old woman has to sit here and wonder which medication to buy... Does she buy the 2 blood pressure medications that the doctor has her on, or should she buy the blood thinner and the stuff she needs for her degenerative disk disease? What about her diabetes? She has some insurance but, much like me, the co-pay is so high that she simply can't afford it.

Needless to say, I was ecstatic when I heard about President Obama's attempts to reform health care in the United States. However, as month after month trudges on, I wonder if we will ever see a ray of sunshine in an otherwise dreary sky. Politicians talk of mandatory health care and fines if you don't have it, yet they also speak of affordable health care.

Meanwhile, I sit here and look at the current co-pay I have - over 3/4 of my income for the month - and I wonder who will deem what is affordable? Can I afford the $1000.00 co-pay every month? Can a 73 year old woman afford $400 a month for her medication?

In the end, I find only more questions and anxiety - Hopefully, when they finally get this all sorted out, maybe they'll give us our anti-depressants for free. I for see a growing number of us needing those on top of everything else.