Guaranteed Healthcare

Up until August of 2008, my mother; like the rest of our family, had no insurance. Sliding fee clinics in our area are constantly packed with patients, and limited on the services they offer. For some reason they refused to give my mother routine mammograms for several years; only seeing her for matters such as blood pressure and diabetes. She was not treated with respect at these clinics, the pharmacy techs were especially rude.

As soon as she turned 65 in August, 2008, she applied for Medicare. When the paper work had gone through she was finally able to go to a good clinic with doctors that seemed to actually care about her well being. They were shocked that she hadn't had a mammogram in years and immediately made an appointment to get the procedure going. A tumor was discovered deep in her breast against her chest wall, it was cancer. They acted fast and in late February, 2009 they performed the surgery to remove the tumor. She is currently going through the radiation treatment and will hopefully pull through and continue living to a ripe old age.

It upsets me that for at least two years this tumor had been growing inside of her undetected; and because we are a low income family... but not low enough to get medicaid... we were not eligible to have any real medical care.

To this day my husband and I are uninsured, and because we make too much qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford to buy health insurance; we will also go until age 65 before receiving proper medical care (unless I am lucky and can find a job eventually that offers medical insurance coverage). My 5 year old son of course is not eligible for Medicaid either, thank god my state offers CHIP (children's health insurance program). I am in the process of applying to get him on that.

It just doesn't seem right that my family; and so many others in this country, have no idea what they are going to do in the case of a major medical emergency... or even for a cold, routine annual pap smear or mammogram. The medical situation in this country does not sit well with me at all.