Got Health Care? Better Keep an Eye on Your Wallet
Got Health Care? Better Keep an Eye on Your Wallet
by Anastasia Ordonez, Jul 13, 2007
Feeling a little under the weather? Arthritis got you down? How about your asthma? Back pain? Blood sugar a little high? If you answered yes to any of these questions, better make sure you have extra savings set aside for that pesky thing we like to call health care since, chances are, your health insurance won’t have your back when you need it.
Truth is, nearly 45 million Americans have no health insurance coverage. And many of the uninsured are in working families where one or more family members are employed. But perhaps even more disturbing is that many people end up spending thousands of dollars for their health care even when they do have coverage. Clauses in insurance policies referring to such things as “pre-existing conditions,” combined with climbing health care costs, have guaranteed that even people with health care coverage end up paying more for less.
The good news is that Americans want health care reform, and this issue is now our number one domestic concern. Working men and women across California turned out to support a statewide tour at the end of June to deliver the message of reform to state legislators in Sacramento. Hundreds of people attended rallies in San Diego, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Fresno, San Francisco and Sacramento to join elected officials, celebrities and union leaders in calling for health care reform.
And at every event during the “It’s Our Healthcare: Road to Reform” tour, everyday men and women hailing from various parts of the state shared their personal health care stories of denied coverage, of giving up savings to pay for life-saving procedures and of watching loved ones descend into bankruptcy because the system failed them. It was a powerful week that garnered a lot of media attention, and Californians are hoping their efforts will result in real reform this year.
Real reform for people like Mary McCurnin. Mary is a self-employed graphics designer from Rancho Cordova, Calif. A few years ago, Mary was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to undergo intense cancer treatment to stop the spread of her disease. Around the same time, her husband became ill and had to spend a few days in intensive care for an intestinal bleed. They both recovered, but it wasn’t long before they were both ill again—Mary’s cancer had returned and her husband needed open-heart surgery. During the next two years, the McCurnins would end up mortgaging their house to the max and losing everything they owned in order to pay off their $120,000 medical debt.
But what makes this nightmare particularly gruesome is that Mary and her husband were insured.
Unfortunately, there are thousands of stories like this. In California, where working families are actively engaged in a campaign to enact health care reform in the state this year, thousands of similar stories have been emerging over the past few months. Stories of men and women who had good union jobs with benefits but were forced to trade wage increases for family coverage.
Or stories of union members who have health care coverage for themselves but have been denied coverage for their families. One such example is grocery store workers in Southern California, who have been forced to accept a two-tiered system in which new employees must wait 12 months for individual coverage and 30 months for family coverage.
Other heartbreaking stories can be read here.
It appears that for the past few years, we’ve all been getting sicker and poorer. While Michael Moore’s newest film “Sicko” is timely and will help get much needed media attention on this crisis, we don’t need him to tell us we’re in bad shape.
We all know too well that our increased co-pays and denial of coverage letters are lining the pockets of insurance industry executives.
But we have to fix our broken health care system nationwide, and it appears that now we have the attention of our elected officials to do just that. Regardless of what you think of Moore, take a loved one or co-worker to see “Sicko” and then help America get healthy again by letting our elected leaders know that we deserve a better health care system now.
http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/07/13/got-health-care-better-keep-an-eye-on-your-wallet/
Anastasia Ordonez is communications director for the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.