Let’s imagine a world where we had universal healthcare in the United States. When I imagine I grew up in a country where healthcare was a right and not a privilege, I imagine my parents standing next to me on my 28th birthday this year. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe nothing would have saved my mom or my dad. But I’ll never know. And I wonder how many other kids out there were like me and watched not one, but two parents suffer at the hands of people making decisions that have a stake in the game and profits.
First, healthcare coverage should not be tied to employment. You know why? Because once my mom lost her job due to her illness she was no longer on her own healthcare plan. Once my dad lost the restaurant none of us were on his healthcare plan. My mom did not get proper care in the early stages of her illness, and it only got worse as time went on. Her medication was too expensive. Even when she managed to get on Medicaid there were hoops to jump through. She was denied disability no less than five times. By that time I was almost 18. My mom had been sick by the time I was 12. Because that’s how the system works. It works to deny you. To make you think it’s hopeless. To make you sink money into a lawyer you can’t afford to get money that should have been yours in the first place. To try and help recoup the costs you’ve already paid. But you know what it can’t help? The loss of sleep and anxiety and torment I watched my parents go through trying to decide which bills to pay, what medication they could afford to have my mom function, the months that we almost lost our house. The check came eventually, but at that point it’s just trying to dig out of the major hole you are in because you couldn’t afford being sick. My dad lost his job, and with that, his health insurance. If he had had insurance would it have been easier to get him to a doctor, to get tested, to diagnose him with melanoma? I don’t know. And that will be something that eats away at me for the rest of my life.
Second, prescriptions should not be priced so high that it means life or death. I’m lucky. I’m relatively healthy. I don’t need a lot of medication. That was not the case for my mom. That’s not the case for the 34.2 million people in the US who have diabetes. Or the approximate 1.8 million people that will be diagnosed with cancer in the near future. The average cost of insulin on a monthly basis last year was $450. In 2019 the average monthly cost of cancer treatment WITH insurance was over $700. I saw the paper my dad received for some of his prescriptions. “You saved $6,000”. Seriously. My family had to pay “cash” for an MRI at Tampa General because it was cheaper than trying to go through his insurance, which we were in the process of changing because Moffitt didn’t accept the other type of Medicaid. We live in a country where I am telling you to always ask for the cash price of a test/procedure because it might actually be cheaper than going through your insurance. Especially if you do the math and you don’t expect to hit your deductible.
Third, this shit is just a flat-out broken system. We will never know if things could get better because we won’t even try. We won’t even entertain the idea that an idea like this is feasible. I got a letter at the beginning of the year that my primary care doctor is no longer in my network. The beginning of this year was a complete goddamn shit show and I didn’t have any time to try and find a new doctor. Why do we even have in-network and out-of-network? When you go to the emergency room, I don’t know about you, but I’m not informed if the doctor I’m seeing or the doctor performing surgery on me is in my provider network. Out-of-network literally just means they don’t have a contract with your insurance provider. That’s it. It’s not because they are a highly regarded specialist who is on the road to finding the cure for anything. They just haven’t come to a momentary agreement.
We are told it won’t work. We can’t afford it. It’s a terrible system. People complain that they don’t want to pay for someone else. Shut up. There are 18 countries that have true universal healthcare in the world. We aren’t one of them. I would gladly put money into a system that helps everyone versus throwing money towards a premium and deductible I hardly ever meet. Don’t you ever look me in the face and say you don’t believe in it because you think people are benefiting by not working, and they are being taken care of by you. Healthcare should be a human right. We just saw a 2 TRILLION dollar stimulus bill be signed-in this week. And everyone is still fighting for scraps. How many people will have to die because they couldn’t afford healthcare?
I’ll be thinking about my what-if life for a long time, while dealing with my current life. I’ll be living with a feeling in the very pit of my stomach that there was a chance my parents could’ve had longer lives. A human life is not a commodity. There should never be a moment when a person has to choose between medication or keeping the electricity on. When you tell me you don’t believe in universal healthcare all I can hear is you saying my family’s struggle wasn’t real. What I went through wasn’t real. That thinking my parents might still be here if we had a slightly better system is frivolous. Our struggle was real. The hardships we faced happened. Don’t belittle other people’s tragedies because you don’t understand what it’s like to be in their shoes.