The Cure

Here's what I know.

Betsy was born with hip dysplasia that left her with medical bills so long and impossible to pay that my parents, who had three other kids, just started wrapping her up in them and taking her picture. There she is, in a body cast on the couch, and a bill no less than 12 feet long swirls around her. My dad worked full time, and when he got home my mom went to work until 10 or 11 at night. Sometimes he had two jobs. Sometimes after Betsy's surgeries, my dad couldn't stay at the hospital with my mom because he had to get back to those jobs.

Jennifer was diagnosed with CLL in 2005 after having surgery to have her adenoids removed. Fortunately she was employed at a fabulously supportive accounting firm, one that helped her relocate closer to home to pursue chemotherapy and one that gave her time off during her treatments. It was also one that came with incredible health insurance. And it is exactly that health insurance and the chronic nature of her disease that keeps her in that job. She knows her disease will flair up again at some point, she knows that she will need treatment, and she knows that the only way she can get the treatment she needs is to have health insurance. Which means that even though she wants to try a new career, wants to stay home with her future babies, wants to have the life she chooses rather than the one the health insurance industry forces on her, she can't.

Heather has two sons. The older son has a sensory issue of some kind. He has been to therapy to learn how tricks for how to deal with it. Because of this issue, he was traumatized while trying to pottytrain and had to be admitted to the emergency room. Heather is a stay-at-home mom who has worked as a nurse and an insurance assessor. She told me once that when you put bandaids on a patient in the hospital, the patient is billed for the entire box of bandaids even if they only use two. Same thing for gauze. Some thing for fluids. And the sticker price of these drugstore items are hugely inflated because, hey, it's not the person we're charging, it's the insurance... In trying to get her son the intervention that he needs, she has had to hound insurance companies for thousands of dollars. Normally a financial genius with a safety net that makes me jealous, Heather and her family have gone into debt trying to bridge the gap between paying for the therapy and being reimbursed by the insurance company, which sometimes doesn't happen.

Charles and Shannon were living in England one year and they came home for the holidays. Normally they buy traveler's insurance, but this time they forgot. This was the time that Charles would get appendicitis and spend Christmas Day in the hospital. He came home after one day, back to his old self, except now his old self had a $20,000 bill attached to it. With no way to pay it, they went back to their country, where if I was visiting I could have surgery for free, and hoped for the best.

I have lived without insurance at several points in my life, as has Mack, and fortunately my politics allowed me to take advantage of Planned Parenthood and the services they offer, which come with fees based on your most recent pay stubs, my health allowed me to stay alive, and my luck kept me from drowning in debt. I eat pretty healthily, I exercise at least once a week, I maintain my weight within 10 pounds, I do regular breast exams, I take vitamins, but I am not invincible to disease or illness.

Thanks to the representatives who stepped outside of politics and looked at what Americans need, I may not have to be. The United States may just catch up to other first world countries in providing this basic service to our citizens. We may just be able to stop worrying about how we're going to take care of our parents and how we're going to afford having children. We may just start taking responsibility for our own health, which is something that, like it or not, insurance companies do not let us do.

It's going to be collectively expensive if we get it, one of the biggest barriers to the public health option, but it's no more expensive than paying the overinflated costs we're personally paying now. (Insurance for me and Mack was $400+ per month at my last job... imagine if I donated that money instead to universal health care and it didn't matter how sick I or anyone else got!)

This really isn't about politics. It's about people... Betsy, Jen, Heather, Charles, me, Mack, our parents, the babies we love, you. It's completely doable, it's long overdue, it's anti-American to let people die.

Click here to find out how to nudge your congresspeople to be brave and forward-thinking. And here to educate yourself on what's really at stake.