The week before Christmas my granddaughter, Becca, began her own
introduction to the health care system. This will ongoing and lifelong as she
was diagnosed and will now live with, T1D (Type 1 Diabetes, formerly known
as Juvenile Diabetes). She is adapting remarkably well. She started doing her
finger sticks shortly after being discharged from the ICU and has progressed to
giving herself shots. Of course, she has witnessed her mother (RA) giving
herself shots for years.
So now both my daughter and granddaughter have, through no fault
of their own, contracted chronic autoimmune diseases. Thanks to medical advances,
there are treatments for both of these diseases. However, the treatments are
extremely expensive, and without insurance, good insurance, I’m not sure how
well we could afford for them to be covered.
Prior to Obamacare (aka the ACA, less than 8 years ago), those
pre-existing conditions would have eliminated them from being eligible for any
kind of insurance coverage except through an employer’s plan. And when my
daughter lost her job (which she did, an early casualty of the recession, right after Becca was born), she became dependent on her husband
for that coverage. Not only that, in those less than “good old days,” she would
have been virtually forced to conceal her disease in order to get hired at
another job. Why? Because with employer-provided health insurance, a company
wouldn’t hire her and thus raise their exposure to the expenses associated with
the disease.
Back when I was negotiating contracts (including health insurance)
for Hancock teachers, we knew exactly who were the few teachers exposing the
pool to risk and causing our rates to go up. Because that is what any kind of insurance is. We all contribute to expand the pool and spread the risk. We are all helping to pay for someone else. Fortunately, my daughter has a
husband with skills and a good job, complete with good insurance. Even so, the
expenses they face for their meds are significant. And what would have happened
had he lost, or should he lose, his job, an outcome never beyond the
realm of possibility in our modern economy?
My brother, with a serious
heart condition, also needed his wife’s employer-based insurance until he
finally qualified for socialized medicine (Medicare). I’ll draw conclusions and
make some further observations about the system in Part IV, but I unmistakably
have a vested interest in the pre-existing conditions issue. Please forgive me
if I take your opposition to all things Obamacare-related personally. And, for
obvious reasons, I also clearly prefer to have health care decisions in the
hands of a doctor and not a for profit insurance company that does not want to cover the $2,000+ a month life-saving medical treatment.
* See PA Senator Pat Toomey
(R) for this analogy. To be fair, he didn’t leave it at that and did suggest
there might be other ways to cover people without overburdening the poor insurance
companies. I, personally, am not that big a fan of insurance companies, but he
apparently is sympathetic to their plight. I am guessing their donations to his campaign are more significant than mine.
