Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith 

Ah, Independence Day.  We Americans love our freedom and our freedom to choose.  But when it comes to our healthcare system, it seems we’ve forgotten that our choices are most limited and our freedom most restricted under the broken, for-profit, private health insurance model that has been outdoing itself on greed and sleaze for decades.

Kids, women, all non-white ethnic groups, seniors, sick folks – all of these groups have been among those discriminated against by the high-cost, high-profit U.S. healthcare system.  Periodically when the abuses became just too egregious politically and socially, our government would struggle to put programs in place to address the disparities and quiet the storm.  But profits must be paid under this system, and Americans are not free to choose either their doctors or their treatments when the bottom line is the top priority.

When I wrote a piece earlier this week about a $7 laboratory charge holding up blood work for my husband, I did not expect the outpouring of stories from other Americans who have experienced similar problems over small medical bills.  From coast to coast and in every state of insurance, un-insurance, under-insurance and in poverty, in middle income or in wealth, it seems many of us have had our medical care interrupted and sometimes prevented by providers holding many of the keys to the kingdom of our healthcare system.  Heart attack, cancer, bleeding disorders, stroke – none of these potentially life-threatening conditions have prevented patients from being asked for money before being treated.

Pictured above:  The Wilkes family of Colorado (read on to learn more)