NY Times - "Without insurance it’s cheaper to die.”

[freshwest]

3. Cheaper to die is why my father is dead. Confronted with an inability to get insurance because of a

'Pre-existing Condition,' no one would insure him when he was working virtually every day of the week from sunrise to sunset in his business.

He'd had several heart attacks and needed surgery. Finally he was given 3 months to live without it. The doctors said there was a very slim chance he'd survive the operation but that the cost, $100,000 in 1960s dollars, would still have to be paid.

He would have had to mortgage all the property he owned or had equity to pay for it and no one capable of making the payments. He would have left us with without a roof over our heads.

So he refused to gamble with the poor odds and lasted 5 months, mostly at home with an oxygen tank. He got up to spare his wife being bothered with his restlessness and laid down to sleep on the living couch and never woke up.

I remember when she woke up in the middle of the night and found him and called us out of our rooms to see him lying there. He was pale, cold, but at rest with the stillness of death.

I didn't find out what preceded all of this at the time but was told by the relatives who moved into the house to help me finish high school. His VA and SSA orphan benefits paid for my share of living expenses, there wasn't a dime to spare.

They told me what the examiner told them, that he was amazed he'd lived so long, with that much scar tissue. He thought it was only his will to live that kept him alive. They impressed upon me that my father knew that we children needed him.

It's hard enough trying to get well without looking at your life or death in terms of cash. Or doing what Obama's mother had to go through to take care of him:



I agree with what Obama says there.