Dysfunctional Healthcare

I am an American without any health insurance because I lost my job last year in February. I am 63 years old, too young to qualify for Medicare. I have a seizure disorder for which I have to take medication daily and maintain a therapeutic level of that drug in my system or I will have a grand mal seizure. I have other health issues too, but they won't kill me as quickly as my seizures can.

I also know a little about the insurance companies and how they operate. I once worked for Cigna as the administrative assistant to the medical director. I covered their weekly meetings they called "Grand Rounds" in which the director and the RNs met to haggle over what coverage they would have to cover and what they could deny. I saw some women RNs who wrestled with their conscience about care they knew should be covered for the patients they saw. I saw one who often referred to the women patients they visited with a horrible 4 letter word that starts with "C."

America is far down on the list of countries with the standard of quality of healthcare. England, France, Japan, and almost all first and second world countries have better healthcare than we do. Americans who have lived overseas for any length of time know the advantages their host countries afford their citizens in need of medical care.

I am pretty certain what direction our government will take during President Obama's push to raise our own bar for healthcare. Despite Obama's wish to take better care of all Americans, the insurance companies like Cigna, BCBS, et al have their own cancerous tentacles deeply attached and entangled in our Congress and Senate in the form of PAC contributions. Do you know how much your own Senator and Congressman has taken in the form of political contributions to their campaigns to be elected and remain re-elected to their offices? I have a pretty good idea those contributions are high. I would be surprised if they weren't.

And what about the cost of drugs we have to take to stay healthy? My costs are high, but they aren't anywhere close to what many seniors have to pay. Seniors are not the only people who have to deal with steep bills. Anyone with a serious illness or condition of their own or of a family member has to contend with these same frustrations.

The cost of drugs in America is higher than in many other countries because the pharmaceutical industry believes Americans can afford higher costs. Their bottom lines are some of the most profitable of any type of business. Yet our taxes are often directed to those industries' research. So, we pay for the research, and when a profitable drug is developed, we pay for it again, and again, and again.

We used to never see ads like the ones we are now seeing. Pharmaceutical companies agressively advertise their drugs so that our citizenry will request those drugs from their own doctors. And sometimes, drugs are rushed through trials to get them to the market place so that the huge profits continue to roll in. And, more often than should be happening, drugs that have dangerous side effects and direct effects that do more harm than good, even causing death are being released for sale with disasterous effects. And we used to never see lawyers advertising on television, but how often do we now see those very people advertising for clients who have been harmed by these very drugs? Daily. Is this progress?

Who is profiting from our healthcare system? Not the average Joe or Josephine, but Insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, the legal industry, and perhaps even our own representatives are profiting from them. Do you know how much stock your congressman or senator owns in any of these industries? I bet A LOT.

When the healthcare bill was coming up for a vote in the Senate, I wrote my Tennessee Senators and asked them to vote for it. I got an e-mail back from Bob Corker telling me why he wasn't going to vote for it. He doesn't have to worry about the quality of his own or his family healthcare. He doesn't have to worry the cost of any drugs his family might need.

I didn't get a direct answer from Lamar Alexander. Now I get a monthly e-mail with blather about what a good senator he is and how much I should admire him for everything he is doing for Tennesseans (which is mostly bull). He doesn't have to worry about his healthcare either.

It literally make me sick to hear about how our healthcare bill is being watered down and probably lots of things are being inserted into it that have nothing to do with healthcare. I know I won't have better healthcare any time soon.

If fact, my goal at this point in life is to stay as healthy as I can because I can't afford to go to the doctor now and to parse out as much as I can to keep my drugs on hand so that I don't have any seizures.

God Bless Americans like me, because our government doesn't seem to care. Only God cares.