Guaranteed Healthcare

Some of you may be too young to remember the agony of Vietnam. I remember it well.

On Independence Day, 2008, those of you who weren't around in the sixties and seventies, might like to know how an older generation took down a government and changed the course of a nation.

Some of you may not remember the selective service system and the spectre of young Americans being conscripted to fight in another illegal and immoral war. I remember it well. I remember my brother's draft card. We had a lottery in those days, my brother got lucky, he pulled a low number.

Others, like our current commander-in-chief, joined the National Guard as a means of evading a likely death sentence in Vietnam. As the scion of wealth, Mr. Bush got lucky and got a preferred assignment (from family connections), and was assigned a safe position in the Texas Air National Guard.

So why on a blog devoted to bringing guaranteed and affordable single-payer healthcare to all Americans, am I reminding you of those dark and terrible days?

Because as we know, changing a country requires much more than just showing up to vote.

I'm also reminding you about how an earlier generation changed a country because I am scared. I'm very scared.

We know full well that the collapse of the U.S. healthcare system has impacted millions of Americans. Now even middle class Americans are no longer able to afford healthcare.

But when you read things like this, it just hits you in the stomach. You embrace the reality that our only option is to take the cause to the streets, and demand the political class respond to the American people, to us, not the lobbyists hired by the parasitic insurance industry.

 A day in bankruptcy court would make you sick

It is Friday morning at the federal courthouse in Downtown Indianapolis, and U.S. Bankruptcy Court Trustee Gregory Silver sits behind a low table in a room on the fourth floor calling out names of Hoosiers who have filed for discharge of their debts. In a somber scene with the air of a fiscal confessional booth, many petitioners come forward with slumped shoulders and slightly bowed heads, and then softly answer Silver's questions about the financial collapses that led them to this room.

A young woman from Southside Indianapolis has racked up enormous debt due to the costs of childbirth. A middle-aged couple from the Northwestside was sued for payment of their medical bills. Another woman had the misfortune of being attacked by a dog before health insurance from her new job kicked in. Even after turning a lawsuit settlement over to bill collectors for hospitals and doctors, she still owes them $35,000.

 

Remember that in the United States of America, even if you're privileged to be able to pay for basically worthless junk insurance, you may be only one illness away from bankruptcy. You don't have to believe me, read on.

Most of those in Silver's court have several things in common, in addition to the humiliating surrender of their cars and homes and the shredding of the credit cards they used to pay for emergency care. Most are working, and many of them had some health insurance at the time of their illnesses or injury. But their insurance didn't cover the costs of their treatment.

"More and more of the middle class is finding out that even if they have jobs and insurance, they can be wiped out by medical events that are not even catastrophic," says Dr. Christopher Stack, a retired orthopedist and co-founder of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, the state's chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. "You can run up a high five-figure bill real easily."

As the economy slides deeper and deeper into a recession which is beginning to resemble the Great Depression of 1929, more and more Americans will lose their jobs and their employer provided healthcare.

You know things are in a death spiral when Crain's New York Business, a weekly magazine catering to Manhattan business describes the situation in these stark terms.

Since the credit crisis swept over Wall Street, tens of thousands of New Yorkers have lost their jobs—and their ties to employer-sponsored insurance. Many Wall Streeters will be covered by severance packages for a time. But businesses that rely on the securities industry are also eliminating employees; if those people remain out of work for any length of time, they are unlikely to be able to afford private insurance.

Such insurance has become so expensive that the number of people in New York state buying it plummeted 94% between 1994 and 2006, the Manhattan Institute says. Some plans cost as much as $3,700 a month for a New York City family.

 I'll end by telling you that I live in Manhattan and I pay over $650.00 a month for junk health insurance.  My renewal is in December and I'm scared. I'm really scared.

It's long overdue that we heed the call of a previous generation and march on Washinton in the largest outpouring of citizen rage in the history of our nation.

This is my Independence Day message.