Call it a bizarre coincidence but I recently received word that three women are struggling with breast cancer payments for treatment.
It happened that my wife and I met some friends at Salute Restaurant on the beach for some shared appetizers and glasses of wine. For me it was a night off work, for them it was an after work gathering and it was delightful. The wine gave me an excuse to sit for a good long time to eat and dissipate the alcohol before the ride home. We shared plates of appetizers, clams, salami, cheese, salads and vegetables and talked.
The conversation turned to a mutual friend who was forced to return to work facing the threat of being fired even as she started treatment for breast cancer. Were she to lose her job she would lose her health insurance, the delightful double whammy of crap health coverage and employment woes in the US at the moment. However it soon became clear that we had to pass round the hat because she is having trouble meeting the co-payment requirement for her treatment.
Then later my wife received word that a friend of hers got two e-mails requesting financial help for two more women also diagnosed with breast cancer, with jobs and insurance and massive co-payments they cannot manage. I was listening to my wife talk about these personal disasters and I couldn't help but wonder what it was that prompted our Republican Congressional Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to shout "No!" on the recent health care vote in the House of Representatives. I couldn't help but wonder if her Congressional Health Care Plan ever sent her a sharply worded letter telling her a treatment was not covered.
Then later my wife received word that a friend of hers got two e-mails requesting financial help for two more women also diagnosed with breast cancer, with jobs and insurance and massive co-payments they cannot manage. I was listening to my wife talk about these personal disasters and I couldn't help but wonder what it was that prompted our Republican Congressional Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to shout "No!" on the recent health care vote in the House of Representatives. I couldn't help but wonder if her Congressional Health Care Plan ever sent her a sharply worded letter telling her a treatment was not covered.
Meanwhile the new report that women under 50 should or should not have mammograms is becoming fodder for the health care debate. Is it the start of "government rationing" or insurance companies scamming women for higher profits? Who cares? It seems even if you have insurance you might very well not be able to afford the treatment or the preventative care. How many read the news that even private funding of abortions may be outlawed by the health care bill? The Catholic Church toiling as usual to do God's most obscure work, insisted that a back door abortion prevention tool be inserted into the bill and never mind if health care reform is derailed. It's just unbelievable to me how many people get their oars in and stir the pot up. Residents of other industrialized nations, secure in their own versions of "socialized medicine" must think we are in collective delirium. We, the "Leaders Of The Free World."
Is it possible we live in a world between the 49th parallel and the Rio Grande, where only personal experience moves us anymore? What more can these women do, they have jobs, they have insurance and they are in a jam. And Ros-Lehtinen's answer is what exactly? More of the same. Surely we, collectively, can do better than that. Even brainstorming over appetizers I can come up with a half dozen alternatives that are better than facing either dying bankrupt or of breast cancer. Hell, I can even figure a solution to the abortion thing, a subject that leaves me cold. No public funding of abortions and insurers and women decide whether or not to cover it in the privacy of their contracts. Done. You'd think our dear leaders could manage it too, instead they continue to push us down the rat holes of their lobbyists' pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. Better not get cancer in the meantime if you don't want another reason to go bankrupt. Or die.
Is it possible we live in a world between the 49th parallel and the Rio Grande, where only personal experience moves us anymore? What more can these women do, they have jobs, they have insurance and they are in a jam. And Ros-Lehtinen's answer is what exactly? More of the same. Surely we, collectively, can do better than that. Even brainstorming over appetizers I can come up with a half dozen alternatives that are better than facing either dying bankrupt or of breast cancer. Hell, I can even figure a solution to the abortion thing, a subject that leaves me cold. No public funding of abortions and insurers and women decide whether or not to cover it in the privacy of their contracts. Done. You'd think our dear leaders could manage it too, instead they continue to push us down the rat holes of their lobbyists' pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. Better not get cancer in the meantime if you don't want another reason to go bankrupt. Or die.