That story surely expresses the essence of what I have experienced with myself, my daughter, and my grandson. Mine was an injury when I was in Jr. High that nearly cost me an eye. My dad had insurance through his meat cutters union so my eye was saved after 5 surgeries and a year in and out of the hospital. My daughter spent a year in an out of the emergency room with acid reflux so severe that she would nearly pass out from the pain. Her insurance as a teacher gave her the help she needed to recover. My grandson born with bilateral cleft lip and palate developed asthma that put him in the hospital on multiple occasions. The same insurance that helped my daughter helped him get the treatments he needed to get his face put together and get his asthma under control. We were among the lucky ones.

Health care should be a right. Those that will argue otherwise either have never had a health problem or are so devoid of human spirit that they have lost the ability to relate to anyone on a emotional level. We should not continue to tolerate the system that we have in this country that is focused on disease treatment instead of disease prevention. We should not tolerate a system that allows an industry based on profiting from the health problems of others.

My health care story is that I had a number of crises when I was young, all of which would have killed me, not one of which cures would have existed but for... the free market? Gov't investment? I would say, science and the scientific method. No government there. That was fundamental. Antibiotics saved my life several times over. No antibiotics saved me the same way. The ability to operate in a sterile environment did, too. Clean water, decent nutrition, a stable family. Those things provided health. The role of accident and the unknowable future cannot be accounted for.
In those days, people PAYED CASH for "health care." In my days, I did, too. All my life I PAID OUT OF POCKET for my access to doctors... some of whom were free to provide services for free, but no longer do because of the strictures placed on them by their companies. And insurance never coughed up a dime until I was 52 years old. Where did all that money go? Why was I not guaranteed some benefit for it all those premiums? The free market needs to answer that, and I am a free market kinda gal.
I cannot speak for others in other circumstances at the time. In 1948, my brother was turned into a CP brain damaged human being after the same doctor (a woman, by the way) had already let my eldest sibling die in the womb a month after her due date. Nobody got sued. Should that doctor have been sued? It would have been just if that ineffectual, even harmful person paid for her bad judgment by helping my family support my brother at the very least!
Should my parents have been more assertive? All I know is, with ME, they found a country doctor, not "the best gynecologist in NC". I was born intact.
Strept throat at age 5 was cured by allowing the fever to "break" the bacterium, by driving the fever up as fast as possible. Yes, I may have died or suffered brain damage. Some might argue that indeed I did suffer brain damage. LOL... No antibiotics. Kidney infection solved with sulfa drugs (WW II). I am allergic to sulfa now, though, and the class of antibiotics that are so derived.
Appendectomy at age 7....worms in that organ. Never suffered so much pain in my life. Who knows how or why, but my appentix was 3 seconds short of bursting and in those days, you died of peritonitis.
Needed a urethral dilation twice when about ten years old. The doctor and anesthesiologist deserve credit. Who paid for that? My father.
Did black folks get that level of care? If they had the money, and if the doctor wasn't a racist, yes. If they did not have the money? If my father did not have the money? I guess I would be dead now. Our white family was refused housing because of our religious affiliation , well, my Mom's anyway, and thank goodness because we found an amazing community to be in for three years, the best three years of my life. So please don't associate access with color. People were and are bigots, as anyone who sits in a college classroom will attest.
And so now, having paid usurious premiums to any number of different health insurance companies which never had to expend one single penny on my behalf, given my high deductibles and their clever rules that preempted them from paying, having been both employed and self-employed, I find myself without any income and, certainly, health insurance.
I will be declaring bankruptcy after I achieve the BA I need to get work...(one cannot receive student aid if one has declared bankruptcy, did you know that? So as you try to repair your life, the "basterds" destroy any hope for a legitimate life) because of the enormous sums I owe to hospitals and doctors. I feel wretched about this, because those folks deserve to get PAID. They need MONEY to exist. As an artist, I need money to exist (as an artist or simply as human being). Stop blaming the doctors, etc. Look to the unions, the feds and the economic distortions that punish companies who don't offer the politicians a blood line to their pockets in excess of the regs and taxes they already pay.
Get the frigging government OUT. Then watch the prices fall as doctors compete directly and are unburdened by the state and the insurance companies.
Let the market sift it out and stabilize this mess the government has made. Banks bad? Let 'em go. The folks in DC are reeeally scared, as well they ought to be.
I am trying to find a country to move to at this point, but I fear that the pointless paper the US Treasury issues will not be sufficient to get me out. Oh, and do not think that this is not a common discussion these days, along with secession...OOOh, aaah, now I have said it. OOOh, aaah, I expect I will be smeared, tricked, or disapeared for simply uttering what I only observe.
Do I owe loyalty to the USA? I would ask, does the "USA" owe loyalty to the constitution that established it? Apparently there are many in power who will distort and use that document to their own ends, exactly what Ben Franklin warned us about. I respect the founders' vision, no one alive in power except for three I won't name, seems to any more. I agree with Tom J., I don't owe previous generations and their bad decisions anything.
I certainly don't owe anyone my life. I was not born a slave and just because of accident of birth, I do not need to remain one. I spit at the ideology that assumes that I am a born slave. To what do I owe my life? The anesthesiologist and the doctors, my parents and the culture which respected property rights and human life, those individuals who existed outside of, even in spite of, the state.
So if I am mocked when I am in deep distress, without help, family or friends, and I turn to the state, now? What do I say? What would you say? No really, what would you do and how would you rationalize it? I say, untaxed, I would have a much deeper and broader net to catch me as I fall. And I would not have to look to anyone, except for work, which by the way, I am doing.
Will the Kochs or Buffets see fit to buy a place and allow freedom-loving folks to live there tax-free? Oh, that St. Barth's and the Rockefellers did that already...
I hope that USB SPITS in the face of the IRS. I applaud the courage of all the individuals who are risking their lives by NOT coming forward to those evil people in the "Treasury". Good on them. You have no moral right to claim my time on this planet nor what I may produce by my efforts. I have no claim on you or yours... Doesn't mean I won't reach out my hand to help you if you need it, indeed I will be better prepared to do so without the state hampering me...or to ask for help...but I will be God damned if I will lie and say that the government's gun at he back of my head is going to be telling me what is the right thing to do. What have those folks wanting privacy in their banking done? Have they defrauded anyone, which the US government does daily? Oh, right, we need the styate rto protect us from the Madoff's, who operated for decades openly under the noses of the Feds? Why WHY is the Fed going after 52,000 individuals who banked with USB? What is really going on here ? Fear. Brutality. That is the Federal "Government."

I had health care when my son was 10. At that time, he stopped growing and I brought him to the Cleveland Clinic for a second opinion, my health care providor dropped coverage and fortunbately, I was able to cover the medical expenses. This occurred 20 years ago and there wasn't anything else I could do. The government has continued to allow Health Insurance Companies to avoid paying their abligations. The AARP is another sham, using membership fees to court insurance companies. Is there an honest policy any legislators put forth?

Connie,
What a great article. I am also a life long asthmatic. I too have spent time in the emergency room and hospital as both a young and older person. I also have a Summer birthday when allergies are the worst, no parties for me too sick. Unlike the Fox commentator who was saying that they never talked about health insurance when they were young, it was a constant conversation in our house. I currently have insurance in a large group so cannot be denied coverage. If I was to go on the street to buy insurance I would likely be unable to obtain it at any price. We asthmatics are extremely bad risks. Monthly drug costs of around $300 and if you're getting allergy shots its going to be around $100 per injection then throw in at least one unscheduled trip to the doctor per year along with your normal appointment. Suddenly you're spending a lot of money. Insurance companies don't like their money to flow in that direction. I have a story that happened in my town. A person died from asthma, turned out he had the same doctor as me. Anyway he was always between having health care (medicaid) and working at jobs without a health plan. So, he died when he actually had a job.

I also think that people who don't use our current system are clueless as to how it works. We have the best health system that money can buy. We have the best insurance plans as long as you don't have to interact with the system. If you do you're told that we no longer cover this drug, this medical equipment, you only get one of those per year, you get billed for something that should be covered.... I'm no fan of the government running anything but in this case the insurance companies have been bad actors and at the very least should have to be heavily regulated. From the 20+% increase in cost per year (inflation at 3%), to denying coverage, to the pre-existing condition problem, to revoking coverage they are asking to be regulated. For those that think that this system is great go and get a quote telling them that you are listed as a moderate to severe asthmatic. Explain to them that you bike 200 miles a week and cross country ski and are in good shape. You'll be lucky to get anything for less than $3000 per month if at all. Now that's rationing!