Guaranteed Healthcare

As a health care professional and an administrator at a leading academic teaching institution, I firmly believe we need to support HR 676 to establish a single payer health care system. Day after day I see patients who whose health and ability to be a productive member of society are determined by an insurance company.

Children and adults who have total hearing loss are denied by insurance companies to receive the devices that will allow them to hear, cochlear implants and Bone Anchored Hearing Implants. Medicare and Medicaid pay for these devices but private insurers will not. Patients have had to go on disability because their insurance will not pay. Private insurers who received thousands of dollars in insurance premiums from these patients have shifted the cost to the government for the person's care. For some cases I have even offered to waive the physician fees if the insurance would pay the manufacturer for the device. They still refused.

My own son, who is 21 years old, has been a Type 1 diabetic for 18 years. My insurance company has refused to pay for a continuous glucose monitoring system. I am still fighting them. They say it is experimental and no amount of documentation and letters from his endocrinologist, hematologist and gastroenterologist specialist physicians will change their minds. He is ill but his path to well being is in the hands of insurance companies and not his physicians. Thank you for your time and hope that this letter makes a difference