Middle Aged, Middle Class, Uninsured
The title of this article describes me, and I have just read in the paper that our numbers are growing. Our health care system is caught in this catch-22, and we seem unable to figure a was out of it.
When we start to become ill we put off going to the doctor because we can’t afford to go. Then we get so seriously ill it can become a life and death situation. So we go to the ER because they can’t turn us away, by now we are so sick we have to stay in the hospital till we are stable enough to go home. By that time the bills are a thousand times what they would have been at a doctor getting early treatment. This exact situation happened to me six months ago. I have a full time job, but this last year for family coverage costs went up to around $800 a month. That is the rent payment on my apartment.That leaves me between one thousand and twelve hundred to cover, rent, food, utilities, car payment, car insurance, car gas, clothing and misc. for a family of four. I think you can see how the math doesn’t work out.
What happens now is that people who are insured have prices increased to recover the costs of people who are uninsured, in turn the insurance companies raise their rates to recover their costs, and then people who are insured find they can no longer afford the insurance, thus increasing the numbers of people like me.
It has been said by some that health care is not a right and that people who can’t pay should just wither away and die. I have heard this from doctors and talk radio hosts. They of course are all insured.
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