Carol Gross responds:
"Please keep on advocating for a national health plan. My husband and I both worked and paid for health insurance for many years and never really accessed those benefits until he became very ill with early-onset Parkinson's disease. Now, in order for him to be able to move, eat and speak, it takes up to $1500 a month in medications. We now live on one instead of two paychecks. It has become increasingly difficult for us to cover his medical costs even with having two private policies and Medicare. We are far more fortunate than some because I also am a working professional. Our out-of-pocket costs for medical services take nearly one-half of our annual income. If things keep on getting worse we will have to just become poor enough that we quit even trying to pay our own way. It seems that only the poor and the rich have any secure health benefits, and almost everyone can be touched by a health care crisis without out any real safety net of protection, no matter how long they've contributed. When they actually need the services they may no longer be available to them. The truth about health care is shocking."
Comment: Medicare and two private policies. And yet out-of-pocket medical expenses are nearly half of Mr. & Mrs. Gross' annual income. What has happened to the security of health care coverage?
The fact that we are tolerating the exclusion of 40 million from health care coverage is a national disgrace. But the explosion in under-insurance now threatens access to care for most of the rest of us. Private health plans are rapidly shifting more and more of the burden to the beneficiaries. The deficiencies in coverage under Medicare have long been recognized, creating a market for private Medigap and Medicare + Choice options. But these too are becoming less effective in covering out-of-pocket expenses.
The effort to gain coverage for the uninsured is only part of the battle. There is urgency in reversing the trend to "empower" patients by making care unaffordable, a market "solution" that can negatively impact all of us. Mrs. Gross is right. Only the wealthy, who are able to fund all of their needs, and the poor, who have access to under-funded public programs, can be assured that there will be no financial barriers to care. Those of the rest of us that are healthy may be complacent, but, in spite of our coverage, we may be one major illness or injury away from a serious financial hardship
For a nation that prides itself on its ingenuity, it is astounding that we accept this shameful state of our health care system that is deteriorating further before us. It does not require a genius economist to recognize that the $1.4 trillion we spend on health care is enough to provide comprehensive care for everyone. Why do we stubbornly continue to support our ineffective, wasteful, fragmented system of private health plans when a public program of universal health insurance would solve our problems? Mr. & Mrs. Gross and all of the rest of us deserve much more value for our health care investment than we currently are receiving.
And I especially want to thank Carol Gross for agreeing to share their story with us. I pray that she will inspire us to act.
Don