Guaranteed Healthcare

Last January, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. MS is the king of "pre-existing conditions" -- a chronic, degenerative, incurable disease treatable only by medications that cost around $20,000 a year. I am currently working, and my job provides health insurance. But one of the most disabling aspects of MS is the crushing fatigue, and I don't know how much longer I will be able to work, at least not in a job with traditional hours and arrangements, the kind that tends to provide health benefits.

In addition, the small company I work for is financially insecure. Even if I manage to hang onto them, in the next year or so they may not manage to hang on to me - or their business. And if my employer no longer exists, I won't have COBRA.

In researching my situation (like most seriously ill Americans, I spend my time not on wellness but on becoming an amateur insurance expert), I find that California law does make a half-hearted attempt to address this gap. Given my prior continuous coverage, if I buy my own policy within a certain time window, I can't be excluded for pre-existing conditions. But there's no limit on what I can be charged for these policies, which the state's own Web site warns are extremely costly. As a disabled copyeditor working from home, something tells me I'm not going to be able to afford the coverage.

MS Society literature calls people like me: "working but worried." I'm also scared and angry, so I'd describe us less delicately: yet more victims of the wasteful American system of employer-based, private-market insurance, which extracts inflated premiums from everyone, forces the sick to work until they literally drop, and then cuts off the care when we're too sick to work. I'm not in the habit of thinking of myself as a victim, but I do think the American health care system is a crime, and I'm not going to just lie down and take it. If we Americans don't recognize that we're being mugged by corporate thugs, we won't be able to do anything about it, and then we truly will be victims.