The State of Healthcare...

Submitted by DesireeSchmitt on Fri, 01/23/2009 - 14:19.

An unpopular topic, I know...

But a topic you may need addressed one day... for yourself... because none of us are getting any younger.

Today put another clinch in my already dismal view of our healthcare system.

Otherwise, I could be heathier than you.  Without healthcare... I'm sure I'm dieing a faster death...

I'm home now after being told the immediate growth on my wrist is a non-emergency.

For me...??  It's the world... my grandmother just died a couple years ago from bone cancer.  

Enter Type I Diabetes. 

My greedy boss got rid of me a few years ago so he could lick his chops of a juicy County business deal...  I hope the FBI is all over his ass!!!

How was I to know that under 20 employees don't get COBRA?  He did... He knew he was screwing me... hard!

So, I got screwed from the bad boys...enter a break in healthcare coverage...

But I tried, and tried, and tried, and tried... enter open enrollment... and tried..

A friend finally showed me the Ohio Underwriters Insurance Guide...

Not to encourage me...

To save me the wasted time and anquish of applying again... and again... and again... for health insurance... to be told... a resounding... "NO!"

I HAVE THE ONE DISEASE THEY BELIEVE TO BE AN EXCLUSIVE EXPENSE.  NON-PROFIT.  CANCER? Under conditions.  TYPE II?  Under conditions.  

QUOTE.  UNQUOTE.  ME! PERMANENT DENY...!!!

I'm dieing a nastier death than you.  Even if I live a relatively healthier life than you..  I'm still dieing faster and worse with no healthcare.  A ship with no navigation equipment, basically.

My contribution to society doesn't matter.  I am simply an expense

An EXPENSE on a TABLE of PROFIT.

So, at the end of the day... all I am... is a LOSS to an insurance underwriter's profit matrix...  I AM A LOSS. Think about it... I AM A LOSS. 

LOSS.  NO PROFIT.  LOSS.  

On some State's Insurance Table...  So they say...  

Do YOU want to be a LOSS???? Are you?  I don't think so... I'm not..  At least the people who depend on my say I'm not...

So here I type... sans healthcare... otherwise healthy... typing with my left hand... because  I have an "unimportant," "non-emergency" growth on my right wrist which makes me temporarily disabled, but because I have diabetes... "that must have caused it..."  blah  blah   blah.

Wake up!  Get on board!  You are right behind me on this issue!!!

 

 

the breakdown

  I feel for you... same issues...compounded by a poisonous NEO environment...lead/mercury....autoimmune diseases...once you hit forty it comes after you with a vengeance.  I have healthcare for now...but will have to work until sixty to keep it...and the game is changing everyday...

Oh, to be twenty, thirty or even plain old forty, again... I am no longer indestructible.

 Debra,  With all the

 Debra,  With all the hoopla going on in Tremont - I dare say to most of us - it's a serious matter - but as I'm pondering and plotting my course so to speak - wondering if it's all worth it - how and if I wanted to continue on the course I have chosen?  Everytime I think I'll throw in the towel, something else comes along and I start to re-think things - problem is - nobody plays by the same rules up at TWDC - one week it up and the next week its down.  I destinctivly remember being at a meeting when they said the CUT OFF date for turning in a bio for the board candidacy was Dec. 18 - after that it was my understanding that you could be NOMINATED FROM THE FLOOR - but that your were not a legitimate candidate until you were nominated that night - if that's so then wouldn't there be some kind of mis-representations by jumping in mid-stream and passing out bios before the meeting is called to order on the 29th. 

- and then there's the election monitors - one would think they would welcome election monitors - I mean isn't there a conflict of interest where they have the staff of other CDC's counting the votes - since they are all funded by the same organizations? 

And isn't there some kind of conflict with Sammy having his own fundraising page - under Tremont West development corp.?    Click below and check it out.

I still want to know what happened to the Walmart donations for low-income families?

https://www.change.org/donation/create?charity_id=199528&gvite_id=1766&project_id=54383

expensive dis-ease

i know desiree - i went 7 years without healthcare. luckily, i did not develop a chronic illness, though i do have two semi ruptured discs that worker's comp snaked out of caring for. truth be told - i really dont care if they want to act like soul-less bastards and use the money to go buy baseball trading cards - i often think i am better off without health care.

i had health care for two years. my old primary care physician was semi-retired and they wouldnt take me back into the fold because i had been gone for too long. i ended up relying on this worker's comp doctor who was a prescription junkie and prescribed celebrex. i ended up being the sickest i'd ever been in my entire life as a result of that crap. truth be told, though, it wasnt all his fault - worker's comp wouldnt pay for any diagnostic or remediation treatment - only drugs. it was pretty much all he could do. i stopped seeing him when he tried to prescribe me this antiseizure medication that was making people lose weight (as well as their mental stability, I found out after I read all the reports and research on the crap - thank god i never filled the script). i guess it was having a moment of success with chronic pain management.

now, i'm two and 1/2 years without insurance and back to being healthy again... with no medications... except my partner/not-legal-husband-though-we-had-a-wedding-with-two-hundred-of-our-closest-friends-and-relatives-we-didnt-file-with-the-big-man has to be the one to do stuff like climb ladders. Hence, he was the one out on the ladder at 9pm in 0 degree weather when our rooster, Henry, flew to the neighbor's roof and we had to do anything we could to get him back in or he might have frozen over night...

ok, my point, it is ridiculous that we have to manage our lives so as to prevent any health catastrophy that would ruin us financially (though truth be told, we wouldnt fall too many rungs - in fact i think we still have one foot on the ground). we are purportedly the wealthiest nation in the world -   we should also be the healthiest IF WE HAD ETHICS, MORALS AND HUMILITY. we dont.

as for that other state of dis-ease, Ms. Jerleen. I know. I feel for you guys stuck here in Tremont with these pompous idiots. I didnt mention in my letter (that guy so graciously posted - i think ;)  I have absolutely nO vested interest in Tremont - other than my love and respect for what it used to be. i will fight for that, but when someone comes knockin' around my home and my family all bets are off - I am mama lion. Since I have no vested interest, it is only reasonable and rational to say - Hey, go at it - make sure you dont leave your integrity and your soul in the dust.

I'm sorry sister girl. 

There are days, like today,

There are days, like today, when I feel like kickin' a can.  My vested interest is the people.  The forgotten people.  The Franks, the Guys, the older people that have been here a lot longer than any of these new commers who live in these $250 -$400K houses, eat at these 5 restaurants, etc. The people with kids that go to school in Tremont - and can't afford the fancy private educations,  The man  I saw being pushed up the street the other day in a wheelchair - while the fancy restaurant on Professor is allowed to block off the sidewalk with a fence not leaving enough space for a wheelchair to safely get around through there. 

My invested interest are those that are holding on to their homes by the skin of their teeth - while TWDC got a donation from Walmart to ease that burden and, yet, nobody's heard of it, my invested interest is that Sammy Catania owns multi properties in this area, lives in a $250K+ home, ownes restaurants downtown,  owns all of the big fancy condos down of W.6th and yet he had to knock some deserving individual  who probably really needed the money out of a $50k/yr job - and get an MA paid for to boot - does anybody see anything wrong with this picture? 

My invested interest is these people who are doing all they can to feed their kids and praying that they can keep them warm and fed through another winter and you have somebody like John Moss (Merrill Lynch Exec) and Ron O'Leary finding nothing better to with their time than to figure through every possible address and step up housing code inforcement.  My investment is you have an organization created for the purpose of helping with all these things and  the best they can do is help take somebody's house and have it smashed - destroy peoples spirits and crush whatever drive they might have left by applying the pressure until they crack under the stress and just give up what they have left and what happens then - those that already have will step in and take for pennies what is left of good people's lives - and the people that made this community will be pushed out - left homeless or to make it however they can and the best  anybody at TWDC can do is give you some kind of run-around answer everytime you ask a question. 

You might say, I'm just gearing up for the fight.

thats not quite fair, jerleen

you have your mother and your son and all the rest of your family living in Tremont as well as a long history there. i think its just a tad disingenuous to say justice for others is your only motive.

You also havent had them go after you personally. there's plenty of other battles and it doesnt help to spread myself so thin. Its not like i'm deciding to become a self-obsessed, money hungry Tremonter... 

RAM Free Healthcare

  http://www.ramohio.org/ This organization is holding an event in early May that will allow residents without health care to see a doctor or dentist for free.  It is sure to be a real madhouse.  It will be held at the Berea fairgrounds on May 2 and 3rd.