Financial ruin, even with "good" health insurance

[eridani]

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/135939/ruined_by_health_care%3A_my_family_learned_that_even_with_insurance_we_weren%27t_safe_from_financial_ruin/?page=entire

Our story also illustrates the unique challenges women face in the healthcare system, as in the economy at large. Women are paid less and given benefits less frequently -- yet they are the ones on whom the responsibility of caretaking disproportionately falls. In addition, women disproportionately, but hardly exclusively, understand the perverse economic choices the healthcare system imposes. In my case, I had to quit working to care for my husband, only to arrive at a point at which he needs care I can afford only if I can find a job. The bills, meanwhile, are often inexplicable, sometimes contain mistakes and are always impossible to resolve without encountering a thicket of red tape.

Even on the other side of that thicket, the insurance companies cannot answer the most vexing question my husband and I -- and so many others -- ask: if "health insurance" does not pay for healthcare when people need it, then what exactly do those words mean? And all this says nothing about the fact that my husband had the foresight to purchase long-term-care coverage. The problem is that it nominally covers long-term care but does not cover its actual cost.

I am often told there is a shocking quality to our story -- it prompts a realization that if this could happen to someone like me, it could happen to anyone. But of course there is little that ought to surprise us; political connections are bound to be of little avail in the face of a problem politics has refused to address.

If there is an upside to the country's healthcare crisis, it is that the problem is hurtling toward a point at which it absolutely cannot be ignored without immediate and disastrous consequences. If there is an upside for me, it is this: returning to those difficult days of poverty and fear in 1969 also means returning to a place where anger inspires activism. I was a young woman then, of course, with a lifetime of battles ahead. I am not so young now. But I have enough years left to have one more fight in me. Healthcare is it.

[KharmaTrain]

1. Ignoring The Elderly and The Infirm...

Our society looks at an illness as some kind of liability...as if when you get sick, or a loved one does, that it's your fault. The plight of our growing elderly population is both a blessing and a blight of the age we live in. People are living longer and this means many will reach 65 plus where, no matter how man attempts to turn back the clock, chronic illnesses can turn those retirement years into a journey into hell...constant battles with the health care system or those who just don't want to deal with people who aren't young or vibrant. We have nursing homes filled with what I call "the forgotten"...parents, grandparents and relatives locked away to suffer "outta sight, outta mind".

I see a big crisis ahead with my generation...one that has spent most of their lives "living on the edge", but also with little emphasis or incentive on preventive health care. I see friends in their 50s and 60s who look 10 years older or who are already suffering from chronic ailments that will only regress in years ahead. Our healthcare system only deals with catastrophic care...many times both too late and expensive that has contributed to the "justifications" insurance companies have in keeping premiums high. In many cases, had there been regular examinations, lifestyles could be adjusted earlier and a focus on health awareness that would cut down on long term costs and make citizens healthier and better educated consumers.

The only option...if you have the resources is to find some kind of supplemental insurance that covers what Medicare and standard insurance doesn't. I know these plans are all but impossible to get once an existing illness is detected, but for those who are looking at retirement in the next 10 to 15 years, setting up such a plan now could save a lot of problems later...and IMO, even if we go to a single payer or some variation of a goverment dominated system.