Almost 2/3 of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of illness and overwhelming medical bills, despite having health insurance, say researchers. This is a 50% increase from 2001, just 8 years ago. And, it’s important to note 2 things. One is that bankruptcy is harder to declare now than it was before 2001 and that this research was done before the current economic situation, so the situation could, in fact, be worse.

Researchers from Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University worked together to produce the first known study of this type to cover the entire country. They found that the vast majority (over 77%) of the people who went bankrupt were among those who did have health insurance when they first became ill.

According to a press release describing the study:

Most of the medically bankrupt were solidly middle class before financial disaster hit. Two-thirds were homeowners and three-fifths had gone to college. In many cases, high medical bills coincided with a loss of income as illness forced breadwinners to lose time from work. Often illness led to job loss, and with it the loss of health insurance.

Even apparently well-insured families often faced high out-of-pocket medical costs for co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services. Medically bankrupt families with private insurance reported medical bills that averaged $17,749 vs. $26,971 for the uninsured. High costs - averaging $22,568 - were incurred by those who initially had private coverage but lost it in the course of their illness.

The highest cost illnesses were neurological (such as multiple sclerosis) or chronic, like diabetes.

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Images: Stock.xchng

Maybe you have health insurance and you think your job is pretty secure so “why fix what ain’t broken?”

That’s NOT the choice you’re facing this election. It’s the choice you wish you were facing. There’s a massive difference.

Employers want OUT. They don’t want to be in the business of benefits anymore.

They face the same health care inflation problem as you do. It’s going up and costing them too much money and they don’t want to deal with the dreaded insurance companies red tape anymore.

Currently there are regulations REQUIRING large corporations to insure their employees and their families if the employ over 50 people.

John McCain will throw you to The Market and analysts suggests that 20 million MORE Americans will lose their insurance.

Personally, I think its inevitable that employers are going to get out of the insurance business all together. They are already cutting back benefits. The only irreplaceable benefit they provide is that they don’t have the luxury of denying benefits to sick employees. They can’t discriminate. Its illegal.

Health Insurance Companies, or The Market (as holy and sacrosanct as the Right Hand of God, Republicans would have you believe, even as The Market crumbles right in front of our faces) is under no such restrictions. It can discriminate as much as it likes.

Who do insurance companies discriminate against? Sick people. People who already have a diagnosis.

Whose going to foot the bill for the sick people the insurance companies don’t want to insure when companies bail out?

The tax-payer. You.

Do you really want to be on the Open Market for health insurance?

No safety net.

No large pool of other people to give you bargaining power.

No requirement that they insure you.

No protection against discrimination.

No regulation requiring them to behave honorably.

Alone, without a group plan or human services representative. Shivering in the cold and . . . sick?

Think. Think. How will this really effect your family?

To find out how truly fun this is - call your insurance company and ask a question about any bill. See how much power one person has in the face of the insurance industry. Better to find out now than when your corporation informs you it cancelled its insurance policy and we haven’t set up a Universal Health Plan for you to join.

Check out this New York Times story by Bob Herbert examining how John McCain’s plan is really going to effect your life.

“A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan,” Herbert writes.

The net effect of the plan, the study said, “almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care.”

And why should he care?

Melissa McEwan, on Shakesville very rightly points out John McCain has been under the privilege of government insurance his whole life. He’s so rich his wife wears a $300,000 dress and he can’t remember how many homes he owns, so a $300,000 medical bill wouldn’t effect his family very much - why should he care if it bankrupts yours?

Bank Crash - Economics 101

What Republicans don’t spend money on - Prosecuting Sex Predators terrorizing our families.

Leaches & Medical Inflation

Top-Down v. Bottom-Up - Economics 101

Yesterday a nurse practitioner took 700 CCs of blood from my right arm.

She’s going to do it again next Thursday morning.

And the next and the next. I wish it were in the afternoon so I could work more on Thursdays, I don’t feel so wonderful afterwards.

I have a rare condition called Hemochromatosis.

My body doesn’t get rid of iron properly, so it sits in my liver poisoning me. Very heavily iron-saturated blood can damage the liver, heart and other vital organs like the pancreas.

What did I do to get it?

I was born.

What could I have done to prevent it?

Nothing. Hemochromatosis a chromosomal mishap of the HFE chromosome. It’s genetic.

What’s the only thing you can do to treat it?

Bleed me periodically for the rest of my life.

Thank the good Lord they no longer use leaches.

I got the diagnosis in my 20s, which quite literally saved me from a liver or heart transplant, diabetes, etc. With hemochromatosis early treatment is everything.

When I was first diagnosed they took a pint of blood from me every week for around a year.

It cost me $10 a week in copays. My oncologist/hemotologist did it in his office.

I thought insurance was a pretty dang good bargain.

I was without insurance for around 6 months after I left that job and then ended up in NYC getting phlebotomies (that’s the medical term for being bled) for another 6 months and my copays were again, $10.

I went 3 years without having to get phlebotomies due to natural iron depletion from pregnancy, childbirth and lactation.

The next time I needed to be bled, I was on my husband’s health insurance. He still worked for a Fortune 500 company with pretty good insurance. Our copays went up $5 so we were paying $15.

But, here’s where it was dramatically different. I started getting bills for extra stuff. Services that used to be included with the original copay.

They now wanted $15 to test my blood levels to be sure it was safe to bleed me.

Then another $15 for the nurse practitioner to read my labs.

And still another $15 for the phlebotomy itself.

And still another $15 for the doctor to track my condition periodically.

Mind you I have to pay 3 of these bills 4 times a month. So it’s not a $5 increase in copays - as it first appeared.

It was $195 a month for the same exact treatment I was paying $40 a month for.

It became a real financial hardship disguised as a $5 increase in our copay.

Another baby caused another 2.5 year time lapse. In the meantime, my husband got a better job, with another Fortune 500 company.

This time our copays increased from $15 to $25.

Which, doesn’t seem like much when you’re considering everything and you’re basically healthy - “it’s only $10″ you tell yourself.

My iron levels are high again. I must be bled weekly. Emotionally, this is no biggy. It sucks, but I make light of it. I have to do it. So I do it with a good attitude like my mother taught me.

Until I call the blood bank where I want to give my iron rich blood to save lives and they tell me they will charge me $75 a week. “It’s a new rule since we were bought by another company,” the woman on the phone tells me.

Blood they will turn around and sell to a hospital, though they qualify for nonprofit status. Blood they claim to need due to a blood shortage.

Blood the hospital will turn around and bill to the patient.

Everybody taking their cut.

My blood and everyone profits but me.

So 2,100 CCs a month of valuable lifesaving blood will go into the trash.

I can’t afford to “donate” it.

My new doctor wants to order tests - “a liver cat scan to look for cancer, a heart test to look for heart conditions, a diabetes test, and maybe a few others just to be sure.”

All words used to frighten me about the potential seriousness of my condition.

“Is there anything in my lab results to suggest there is any reason to suspect my liver or heart or pancreas is malfunctioning?” I ask him.

“No, everything looks normal.”

“Then I’m not doing optional tests.”

“Don’t you have insurance?”

Every doctor I’ve ever been to asks this question as if insurance fixes the health care inflation problem American’s face. It doesn’t.
“I have insurance, but that doesn’t make it free. I could go bankrupt just paying copays for all these tests. I’ll do tests if there is indication of a problem. Until then I’ll only do the weekly phlebotomies.”

“I want you to get labwork every week two days before to monitor your iron levels.”

Doing the math in my head that’s $25 for labwork, $25 for him to analyze the labwork, $25 for the phlebotomy. That’s $300 a month in copays.

“No. I’ll do lab work once a month and a weekly phlebotomy and no extra tests. We’ll see how these offices and my insurance bills all of these procedures this month and we’ll re-evaluate when I start getting bills.”

A few years ago I consented to a number of “just in case” tests when I was suffering from terrible allergies. “We need to make sure you don’t have a brain tumor, we need to be sure you aren’t having serious inner ear problems.”they scare-sold me. The results? I was suffering from terrible allergies - my self-diagnosis turned out to be accurate about $1,000 in copays later. Fool me once . . .

My brother suggested I take courses to become my own phlebotomist and learn to bleed myself.

It’s shocking to think that our healthcare system has come to the point where I’m actually considering draining a bag of my own blood at home to avoid healthcare inflation. Does that strike you as a reasonable option? Does it strike you as the kind of place you want to live?

Our healthcare industry has become a place where I must be a savvy consumer before I’m a patient. Where I must guard myself against medical up-selling the way I guard against being up-sold the super-sized meal at McDonald’s. The difference being if I falter and order the super-size Big & Tasty I’m out $7 and I’ve got slightly bigger thighs. If I misjudge the necessity of scanning for liver cancer I could die, but if I pay for the unnecessary tests it will have disastrous consequences on our family’s economics.

I question my own medical providers motives and realize the distrust has grown to a point that I think my health and well-being ranks below the medical providers’ profit, the insurance companies’ profit and the doctor’s fear of getting sued.

My health and well-being ranks 4th. My economic well-being doesn’t factor in.

The shift in priorities and the massive inflation took a mere 10 years. The same exact treatments went from $40 a month to $300 a month in COPAYS alone. That’s a 750% increase. I can’t afford the same increase over the next 10 years.

If you’re thinking this problem is specific to me, my specific insurance companies or our specific employers - you are mistaken. Studies show the inflation is across the board over the entire health care industry.

I got a mutation of the HFE chromosome, at birth, that will require affordable access to healthcare for the rest of my life. You might get the heart attack, or a premature baby, or leukemia, or diabetes, high cholesterol, thyroid problem, high blood pressure, or a special needs kid.

Universal Health Care will slow healthcare inflation dramatically.

It will insure more people. Uninsured people are a massive cause of both higher taxes and healthcare inflation.

* When you’re uninsured you drive the costs up for me.

Universal Health Care will increase competition of health insurance companies to offer more services rather than less for the same dollar by opening up the market to the self-employed or the “already diagnosed” by creating larger insurance pools.

Universal Health Care will untie our insurance benefits to our employers so we don’t lose our insurance if we become unemployed, divorced, widowed or decide to be self-employed or work on contract. I’m self-employed and I want to keep working this way so I can spend more time with my kids.

Health care accounts for 16% of our entire national spending. It’s expected to account for 20% of our Gross National Product by the time our next President leaves office.

John McCain says we should let The Market, which he implies is as holy and sacrosanct as God, take care of it. The trouble is that The Market has never once decided it’s got enough money. Every single quarter it shoots higher.

Do not confuse The Market with people. It is not people. It is corporations. The Market is Insurance Corporations. The Market is Medical Conglomerations. The Market is a-moral and single-minded.

The Market’s only motive is its own short-term profit.

If you truly, in your heart, believe that The Market is going to decide, as all the millions of baby boomers become simultaneously in need of more medical care and unemployed and more likely to be uninsured, that there is so much business they will lower their prices of their own free will - then I pray you, your kids, or your parents never get sick enough to find out how disastrously wrong you are.

If, like me, you know in your heart John McCain’s theory about The Market fixing healthcare inflation is a big freaking ball of lies and marketing and that the leaches will suck patients dry until we have nothing left - then VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA and Democrat Senators and Representatives who will implement Universal Health Care.

I want a healthcare system motivated by the patient’s health not a system motivated by profit.

I want This is what I asked for for Mother’s Day - hip political t-shirts at Momsrising.org’s new Zazzle store.

Momsrising.org is a bipartisan political action group made up of mothers fighting for Family’s rights. Mother’s rights are family rights. Women’s rights are human rights. Family rights are human rights.

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Opting-out of the corporate workforce is no excuse for ignoring the feminine condition as it impacts working mothers.

Staying in the workforce is not excuse for ignoring the feminine condition as it impacts stay-at-home moms.

Your investment in how women are treated and how laws impact women remains the same, and increases for every female child you have and every woman who will mother your son’s children.

Momsrising takes on fair pay, breastfeeding rights, maternity and paternity leave, after-school programs, education, healthcare, sick leave, pollutants in bottles and toys, television and advertising, and flexible work hours, everything that concerns mothers.

Images: Momsrising Zazzle Store.

It’s such a tight rope women walk in today’s world.

Republicans claim to want to reduce the abortion rate.

Republicans claim to think it’s wrong when women who work fulltime and “abandon their children in daycare.”

Republicans claim to hate “entitlement programs” that cost them tax money.

I have to wonder why, when facing a solution to 3 of their main concerns with universal healthcare, they are not jumping on board with glee.

If women have equal access to healthcare they can prevent conception, the most effective means of drastically lowering the abortion rate.

If women have equal access to healthcare they can more easily work fewer hours, more flexible hours untied to corporate 40 in-office hour work weeks, resulting in more face time with their children. In other words - Mary Kay Lady takes on a whole new level of stability.

If women have equal access to healthcare they are less likely to seek prenatal care and give birth with taxpayer money, thus reducing women’s reliance on “entitlement programs.”

Not to mention all the kids who currently receive SCHIPS because they can’t get health insurance due to pre-existing conditions. With both Democrats’ healthcare reforms “pre-existing conditions” (read: any diagnosis) are overruled and EVERYONE gets equal access.

I have to wonder if they really are looking for solutions or if they are getting something out of having these problems to bitch about?

Perhaps they just hate women?

I think they might be getting more out of having these problems than they would by solving them.

Stop Abortion Vote Healthcare!

Healthcare Corruption

Some fascinating statistics about abortion were released by the Guttmacher Institute late last year. The Guttmacher Institute, both pro-choicer and pro-lifer agree, is the most reliable source of statistical information regarding abortion.

I found the most interesting facts to be these two:

* The abortion rate is the lowest its been since Roe v. Wade in 1973, with 1.21 million in 2005.

* About 60% of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children.

Unlike teenagers who only sought 17% of abortions, these women fully understand the responsibility and the cost of parenthood and family-life.

• Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals;
• Three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents;
• Half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.

The key to preventing unwanted pregnancy and therefore preventing abortion is access to healthcare.

• Contraceptive non-use is greatest among those who are young, poor, black, Hispanic or less educated women.
• About half of unintended pregnancies occur among the 11% of women who are at risk for unintended pregnancy but are not using contraceptives.

That’s exactly the same demographic that currently has the least access to healthcare in America.

Compared with men, women are less likely to have employer-sponsored health care coverage because they are more likely to work part-time, on contract, or freelance and to take time out of the workforce to care for their children and their family members. They are also more likely to be covered as dependents on their spouses’ employer-sponsored health plans. As a result, women are more vulnerable to losing their coverage if they are widowed or divorced.

There are 21.5 million uninsured women and these are the same women who are most likely to seek an abortion because they have no access to healthcare. This statistic doesn’t even include women who carry only catastrophic insurance and therefore have to pay for all healthcare expenses on top of their high premiums. These women frequently can’t afford basic OB/GYN care, including contraception.

No one likes abortion. If the goal is to reduce the number of abortions in the United States then pro-lifers should jump on the opportunity to drastically reduce the number of lives lost by providing equal and affordable access to healthcare for women.

People who rate abortion as the most important issue in America, should consider the flip side. Let’s say you win. Roe v. Wade is overturned. The number of abortions won’t be zero. What about all the women who will inevitably seek an abortion illegally? Now we’re back to back-alley butchering of women.

The result is not only the death of babies, but the needless death of women and babies. We now know these women are mothers of other children and therefore the inevitable outcome is the death of women, the death of their fetuses and the orphaning of existing children. As a fellow Christian - I can’t see how that is better.

What’s changed about the pro-life vs. pr-choice debate? Access to healthcare for these disenfranchised women has never been on the table before. (This could also drastically reduce the cost of adoption for middle-class couples.)

If you truly want to prevent the nasty business of abortion - you should vote for healthcare. Not because you’re turning your back on your principles - but because it’s the most effective way to prevent abortion.

I read this blog about a mother’s struggle to insure her special needs children - the real kind - in our current insurance system. Her child is being dropped because the insurance company isn’t making any money off insuring her.

Basically once they are in the hight risk pool, normal insurance will never cover them again, even if they “outgrow” their issues. They are a health risk, and insurance companies can’t really make money off of those kids.

The bill President Bush recently vetoed would have provided insurance for my kids. Not some faceless huddled masses. These kids. MY kids.

 Read the full HealthCare is a Bitch.

But for the grace of God, there go I.

We’ve always been about $60 gross over the income limit for the Pre-K, free lunch and SCHIPS. The only major difference is our children are healthy and we have corporate health insurance.

My prayers are with you Kyla.

Some authors have to hustle to promote their books.  They struggle to get a book deal, sometimes they self-publish. They contact reporters and beg for reviews. I get contacted by these hard working artists trying to make a difference, write a story, people with something relevant to say.  

But, not Jenna Bush. The President’s daughter has been on my television all day long because she wrote a book.

Which brings me to a post I wrote earlier on Quit Coping, called Fair Smair, about fairness and how it’s futile to think about it.

I mean, I could bring up how my family’s economics are such that my child is getting asthma from living in a mold-contaminated home. What does that have to do with Jenna Bush?

Absolutely nothing, except that it’s her father who has put us in a big expensive war and that’s why the gas and grocery prices have doubled in the last two years, which is also why my family works harder and harder to to no avail. We just work to pay for more expensive gas, more expensive health care, more expensive milk, more expensive groceries.

He’s just my dad, she told Diane Sawyer.

Yeah, well your dad is screwing with my standard of living in a very real way.

But, what the hell does fair have to do with anything?

Did everyone see the Liar McLiar Lie (Karen Ignagni is the president of America’s Health Insurance Plans) on Oprah today?

 We {Insurance Companies} wouldn’t be here if we weren’t doing a great job,  She said.

Insurance companies are doing beyond a bad job - they are criminals profiting on American’s illness.

Elections a coming sister . . I plan to make her statement more true than she knows. What is it Donald Trump says when someone does a very bad job?

Oh, that’s right.

You’re Fired!!

Don’t worry you needn’t be completely unemployed, we will need bureaucrats to make sure everyone’s health care needs are taken care of during the transition. Oh, and we’ll throw in a benefits package, just in case you were worried.

Once again America, I say What Would Jesus Do?

In a July issue of Business Week there is a very enlightening analysis of France’s health care system. Journalist Kerry Capell investigated whether we might adapt to their system, which mixes private health coverage and public health coverage and leaves no one uninsured. And they do it for cheaper and with more health benefit than our current system.

Getting sick isn’t a character flaw. In France the philosophy is not the rich pay for the poor, but the healthy help pay for the sick. The sicker and less able to work you are, the less you pay. So cancer patients don’t have to worry about how to pay for chemo and medication.  They just worry about getting well.

Interesting points:

• 43.6 MILLION Americans have no health coverage.
• EVERY person in France has health coverage.
• Americans spend $803 out of pocket for coverage.
• French spend $239 out of pocket for coverage.   
• The French choose any doctor they want.
• French doctors decide what is medically necessary for patients (as opposed to insurance companies).
• France’s mix of private-public health care came in at number 1 in health care quality in a UN survey, while the US was 37th.
• Infant mortality is 7% here and only 3.9% there.
• The French women live 2 years longer than American women, French men live 4 years longer. 
• 65% of French people are satisfied with their health system.
• Only 40% of Americans are satisfied.
• France spends 10.7% of their GDP on health care.
• USA spends 16.5% of the GDP on health care.

If the French can be healthier and spend less money, then obviously the US should attempt something better than 37th place in health care quality.

We need to notify EVERY candidate, Republican and Democrat, that we’re sick of not being able to afford to get sick.  

There are 2 bills before congress right now. The Healthy American’s Act gives everyone access to affordable private health coverage that can’t be withdrawn. The United States National Health Insurance Act provides health coverage for every American using the existing Medicare system.  

Write your congress person in 5 minutes or less at Congress.org.

Not only is the transformation of our health care the morally right thing to do, it’s the cost-effective and healthy thing to do.