Healthcare

Again, enough is enough. Those who don't support healthcare reform certainly have the right to oppose it...but let's use some FACTS people. What is with simply believing everything reported on FauxNews?

Health care reform is, obviously, near and dear to my heart. Our family has been intimately affected by the the problems that exist within our current health care system. I have close friends who have been adversely affected by the state of health care in this country.

When we lived in Wisconsin, my husband's employer (a hospital) had good insurance. In fact, it was one of the reasons he chose to take the job he was offered. Over 10 years, the policy changed...premiums went up and up, a lifetime cap was implemented, access to specialists was limited, choices were eliminated. For several years, his cost of living raises were LESS than the increases in the premium he paid. So, over time, we received LESS health care and paid MORE for it.

Further, Wisconsin's "safety net" for children who have special health care needs isn't very good. If we had needed to avail ourselves of that program, upon our children's death, the program would have gone after their estate(s) in order to have their estates pay BACK any monies they would have used from the program.

Reform has got to happen.

My children are 11 and 13. They are the age where they should believe that anything is possible. Any career or dream is within their reach. But ask them what they want to be when they grow up and they'll tell you "Rock Stars but we have to have another job, too, so that we can have insurance." This should be heartbreaking to anyone who hears it. We are a middle class, working family. Our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles are all working class people who spent their lives contributing to society. I come from a family of community volunteers, union workers, public servants, GI's, and private businessmen. I have NO doubt that their hearts would break if they were alive to see members of their family struggling to maintain health care.

I have a close friend who has severe hemophilia, the hepatitis alphabet soup (hepatitis A,B, and C) and is HIV positive. The hepatitis and HIV were contracted from the medicine used to treat his hemophilia...medicine that the government KNEW was infected but failed to act quickly on. He contracted the viruses in his teens. He shares that in college, he didn't figure he'd live past 22 so he made the most of it. Minus intimate relationships. No one knew about his Hepatitis and HIV status. He's 34 now. He's married to a wonderful woman. But he constantly must worry about insurance. He works in public health. He's capped out a couple insurance policies (capped out - reached his lifetime cap). He's had to choose between taking the medicines that keep his viral load under control and the medicines that keep his bleeds (from hemophilia) under control. He has devoted his life to public service but has been forced to take a job doing something else in order to stay alive.

What is wrong with this country?

I know a husband and wife who have a child with hemophilia. The husband is your typical blue collar worker. He lost his job. He lost his insurance. His wife worked part time. They didn't qualify for the public insurance program in their state. They were forced to file for divorce so that, on paper, the mother would have limited resources and thus qualify for the state catastrophic insurance pool.

I'm happy that there are individuals out there who have never been affected by the current state of affairs...yet. But sooner or later they will be.

Take it from those of us who have been impacted by this country's current health care system, change is immanent. Those of us who are advocating for change aren't doing it just for ourselves, we're doing it for our children, our neighbors...YOUR children, YOUR neighbors.

If you don't think the current plan for reform is good, take some time to inform yourself. Learn more. Don't succumb to the knee-jerk reaction that change is bad. Change IS going to happen. Reform IS occurring.