How the Public Option Saved My Life

[Joanne98]

Tue Jun 23, 2009 at 05:27:34 PM PDT
Just today I was listening to a debate on Capitol Hill over the proposed health care reform. Lobbyists from the health industry were testifying before a House committee about what a disaster a public option would be, how it would destroy private health care. They kept repeating that there were no studies, no examples to guide us, of what a public option would be like. Allow me to provide one.

Turing's diary :: :: Early in January this year I began experiencing what the doctors call painless hematuria. In layman’s terms it was blood in the urine. Lots of it. And I had no insurance, because as an independent contractor my health insurance had gone up astronomically several years ago to a point where I could no longer afford it. So—what now? As a long-time resident of San Francisco I had heard several times about a program called Healthy San Francisco, which purported to be a kind of health insurance for poor blokes like me. I couldn’t believe it was real, but I walked down to San Francisco General Hospital just to find out. I was directed to a waiting room where I took a number. What happened next was a miracle—in America.

What happened was they signed me up for Healthy San Francisco. It wasn’t free. It was based on my yearly earnings, so I am now paying $100 a month. I also have copays, which are sometimes $10 for a visit, or maybe $100 for a major operation. But the point to keep in mind is that they signed me up after my health problems began and at a price I could afford—which of course is the opposite from standard health industry practices, where you pay through the nose until you get sick and then they try to cancel your coverage.

After three CT scans, it was determined that I had a mass in my right kidney. Cystoscopy revealed a sizeable tumor. Nephrectomy – excision of the kidney – removed the tumor. Now I am preparing for possible chemotherapy. I recently received a notice from the city that the cost of services thus far amounted to some $90,000 (which the insurance covers). Having had my life saved (at least temporarily) by this public option, I would like to "give back" a little by clearing up a couple of canards that the opponents of public option are insisting on.

Canard No. 1: The public option will destroy private health insurance. San Francisco has more private health care than you can shake a stick at. We’ve got your Kaiser and your Blue Cross too. We’ve got training hospitals and teaching hospitals. We’ve got rich people and poets—and we are of course a magnet for the homeless. Bottom line: In San Francisco the public option has not destroyed private health insurance or private health care. The public option is by no means comparable to private health insurance. At SF General there are always long waits—two hours is typical, half-a-day is not out of the ordinary. But if you’re poor and you’re sick, at least in San Francisco you don’t have to curl up and die. And that’s not a study, that’s an operational program.

Canard No. 2: America’s private health care is the best in the world. I had one very revealing exchange with my surgeon that bears directly on this point. The surgeon informed me that I might be in the hospital for as long as three weeks after the operation. I expressed surprise, since a friend of mine had recently had one of his kidneys removed at an Oakland hospital and his stay was only three days. The surgeon wryly explained that in private health care the game is to get the patient out of the hospital as quickly as possible, whereas at San Francisco General the only thing that matters is the condition of the patients and whether they are ready to leave.

That one little moment gave me a huge insight into the grimy underside of for-pay medicine in this country. Yes, it’s the best health care system in the world if you are rich and can afford CAT scans every few months and leisurely stays at private clinics. But for everyday routine health care our system is not only driving huge numbers of families to bankruptcy, it is also full of dubious cost-saving expediencies featuring insurance company employees constantly haranguing doctors and floor nurses about whether procedures are necessary and/or authorized, coupled with a brutal rush to get patients out of the hospital as soon as possible.

I try sometimes to imagine what my situation would have been like had I been living in Omaha or Atlanta. The idea of going to the emergency room with cancer is beyond imagination. What do people do—just die? The enormous peace of mind that came to me when I realized that I was covered for my procedure, even though it was not free, and above all the kindness and professionalism of the nurses and doctors themselves, made me eternally grateful to the city by the Bay. In this case, as is also the case with our treatment of AIDS and our housing and feeding of the homeless, San Francisco leads the nation not just in Internet startups and videogames but also, goddamn it, in human caring and human decency, too.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/23/746067/-How-the-Public-Option-Saved-My-Life

[drm604]

1. K&R

If only this could be on CNN and MSNBC.

[YewNork]

2. This needs to be shared

Turing should write submit his experience to the http://www.healthreform.gov/communityreports/comments.html">Share Your Stories section of http://www.healthreform.gov">Healthreform.gov