Healthcare Reform

I've been quite sure that we need socialized healthcare for quite a few years.  We have one of the worst healthcare systems in the world, in my opinion.  How can I say this, with all of the amazing modern medical advancements available in this country?  Easy.  That healthcare is only available to those that can afford it...unless it's an emergency.  We don't have a healthcare system.  We have a disease management system.  There's no profit in healthy people.

That may seem a bit cynical.  But have you looked around?  Most people that I know with health insurance (and very few people that I know have health insurance), the co-pays are huge.  I heard a man in a crowd this weekend tell his friend that he is literally insurance poor, at his age (which is about 70, by my guess).  Of course, he was talking about health insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, auto insurance, home insurance, and life insurance, all together.  But, the term makes sense.  The reason so few people that I know have insurance is that the premium portion they are expected to pay is too high.  In some cases, the premium payment is more than the individual earns.  THAT situation is just unacceptable.  That's just a horrible attempt by lousy employers to try to make themselves look better by offering a "benefit."  It's not a benefit if it takes your entire income to pay for it.

I recently visited the new healthcare government website, healthcare.gov.  I selected the "Find Insurance Options" tab.  I entered all of my information, right down to my family's inability to afford health insurance.  It spit out five options.

• 1. Health Insurance Through Work- Umm. This is not an option for me.  I'll explain why, later.
• 2. Health Insurance Plans For Individuals and Families- This means buy the policy from a private insurer.  Yeah.  That sounds really affordable...
• 3. Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan/High Risk Pool- Tell me.  Does that sound anywhere close to affordable?
• 4. Medicaid- That is just a sick joke only those that have ever applied for Medicaid would get...and none would find funny.
• 5. Finding Care You Can Afford- This one was my personal favorite.  Clearly they have never tried to do this in my town.  This town likes to pretend they don't have low-income people.  We don't have clinics.  Well, except for that dental clinic that is NEVER open.

This is not to say that I think the Affordable Care Act was a bad idea.  I just don't think it goes nearly far enough.

Let me stray away from this for a moment.  A year and a half ago, I was in a car crash.  The accident was not my fault, but injury does not care about fault.  My auto insurance policy carried medical coverage for auto accidents.  This has been the biggest blessing imaginable, as this has turned into the largest collection of medical expenses I've ever had, and my car insurance company is STILL paying on them. My foot broke in seven places, and I was an amputation risk. After three surgeries, the foot is safe.  But, the spot where my tailbone meets my pelvis is screwed up, most likely permanently.  I cannot work (I'm a student, in hopes of still be able to support my family in the future).  I can only walk for limited amounts of times without narcotics, which my doctors would like me to avoid.  This means that I have a handicap tag for my car, and spend a fair amount of my shopping trip time in an Amigo.  Life in the fast lane, baby!

Now, when I go to Walmart, unless it is incredibly early in the morning (like, before dawn early), the Amigos tend to last about 20 minutes before the battery is dead.  And this is bearing in mind that the Walmart near my house has about a dozen of them.  This is because they are in near-constant use, of course.  Oh a lot of them get used by the tragically lazy, or the chronologically gifted.  And because my handicap is not visually obvious, I have had times where I feel pretty self-conscious about using an Amigo.  But, you do what you've gotta do.

Today the sociologist in me kicked in, as I was shopping.  My Amigo ran out of juice, and I returned it, only to find out there were no others.  This meant I had approximately 10 minutes to get what I needed, pay, and get out.  Think of Amigo-free shopping like being a Cinderella consumer.  Only instead of the carriage turning into a pumpkin at midnight, my hip turns into an electrified pain bomb after about 10 minutes.  Some days are better than that.  But not by much.

So, after my purchase, I'm sitting in my truck, waiting for the throbbing pain to calm a bit, so I can buckle up and drive.  Using Amigos and parking in handicap spaces has allowed me to notice people that I did not notice before the injuries.  Today, I saw several interesting situations.

I saw a family of four riding in an older two-door car, which a wheel-chair bound man was driving.  The wheel chair was one of the standard non-motorized versions that hospitals use.  So, fair to say these folks were poor.  In another direction, I saw a gentleman walking around with a rather heavy-duty looking leg brace on.  He also was driving a rather older vehicle. Let's cut to the chase. On any average trip to the store, I see various people that by appearances are the poor people that people most often just think of as welfare folks.  And one of the most prominent places that I see them is at Walmart.  But, more specifically, I tend to see them near the handicap spaces or tooling around in the Amigos.  A fairly disproportionate amount of the poor I see also suffer from some sort of handicap.

This is the moment that the about mentioned sociologist kicked in to gear.  How do these people end up in their situation?  Did they fall ill or get injured  then end up on welfare/poor?  Or, were they always poor?  You see, it suddenly occurred to me that sure, those peoples' medical bills are most likely covered, as they are handicapped.  But, how did they end up handicapped?

Stay with me, a minute here.  A young person is raising their family as best they can, with a job of fairly low prestige.  Let's say they are a shift manager at a local fast food restaurant.  Insurance is offered through the employer, but it costs so much that it would literally require choosing between rent and health insurance.  So, this person doesn't go to the doctor.  The only time this person sees a doctor is when they get incredibly sick, and end up in the ER.  So, this person misses every warning sign of diabetes, and ends up hospitalized, culminating in the amputation of a foot.  Suddenly, they can no longer work.  The up side is now they automatically qualify for medical coverage.  The down side, of course, is they would totally rather have their foot back.

Now, let's think about one of the problems that opponents of reformed healthcare complain about.  The cost.  There are literally millions of people that are uninsured in this country.  At any moment, they are merely an undetected illness away from permanently qualifying for free or low-cost medical coverage, paid for by the taxpayers. On top of that, they're also dangerously close to qualifying for disability payments. Thus the taxpayers could wind up paying for them to live (barely. Have you any idea how much they actually PAY?). So, it suddenly became clear to me that by refusing to provide basic preventative medical care for every American, we're risking having to support more Americans beyond healthcare(Yes. We.  I still pay taxes, for the record). So much for socialized healthcare being too costly.

I could sit here and poke holes at this all day long.  But, the fact of the matter is, there are people that follow politics refusing to see that common sense and compassion are the greatest attributes that can be bestowed upon us...because they were gifted with neither. (Even though they claim to have more of them than most people do...*cough*republicans*cough*

Why did I name this blog THAT?

You can learn a lot about people at the local Walmart.  This is not to say that you'll WANT to learn this stuff.  But you can learn it, none the less.  Like, you can learn that the man by the deli smells strongly of old cigarettes, beer, and the distinct aroma of a lifelong love-hate relationship with soap.  Not information that you particularly wanted.  But it's information.

But, what happens if you take some time to contemplate beneath what you see on the surface?  Unless you go out there and ask Walmart customers their stories, you'll never really know.  But, if you spend enough time people watching, you might develop some untested theories.  And, you might even be closer to the truth than you ever imagined.

For the record, not all of these blogs are going to be about the Walmart folks.  But, they are all the musings of one of the uncommon few people in this world that has common sense.  Enjoy.