This is super personal to me because it almost killed me. I’ve told this story on reddit, but it bears repeating:
tl;dr lost my doctors due to an insurance change 4 weeks in to a 6 week open heart surgery recovery…
In 2018, my company was in the process of being sold. No big deal, above my paygrade, nothing for me to worry about.
Then I got sick right after Thanksgiving. Really bad heartburn that lasted 5 days. It wasn’t heartburn. I had a heart attack. 12/3 I had open heart surgery, single bypass, and that started a 6 week recovery clock.
On 1/1, the sale of my company closed and we officially had new owners. I also officially lost all of my doctors because the new employers don’t do Kaiser in Oregon. They do it in WA and CA, but each state has to be negotiated and they never had presence here.
1/2 I start working with Aetna to find doctors, hospitals, etc. Beyond the cardiologist I need a new pharmacist, podiatrist, diabetes care and a general “doctor” doctor.
Fortunately, my new employer is a big enough fish, they have their own concierge at Aetna and she gets me into the Legacy system.
On 1/3 I start developing complications, but I don’t know it at the time. It starts with a cough. All the time. Then, when I try to lay down, like to sleep, I’m drowning, literally choking and gagging.
The concierge and I try to get an appointment, we’re told 2-3 months. For a dude still recovering from open heart surgery? Best they could do is 2 weeks. 1/14.
I can’t lay down to sleep so I buy a travel neck pillow and sleep sitting up.
I get to see the new doctor at the “official” end of the 6 week recovery. He doesn’t know me or my history so he wants to run tests.
I’m sitting at home playing video games and waiting on test results when the call comes… Congestive heart failure. Report to the ER immediately.
My heart developed an irregular heart beat, which caused fluid build up in my chest. They admitted me and were getting ready to pull fluid off me.
“What happened to your foot?”
“I dunno, what happened to my foot? I can’t feel my feet.”
Remember when I said I was sitting around playing video games, waiting for test results? Yeah, my foot was touching a radiator and I didn’t know it. 3rd degree burns, first four toes. Pinkie was spared.
So I’m in the hospital a week. I lose 4 liters of water per day. 50 lbs. of water. No wonder I was drowning. Regular bandage changes.
So now I’m facing two procedures. Electrocardio version to fix my heart, skin grafts to fix my toes.
This whole time the new insurance covers 80% until I reach the out of pocket maximum of $6,500. Then it will cover 100%.
The old insurance? ER visit for heart attack, hospital admission, 8 days in the hospital, open heart bypass… $250.
So we hit the out of pocket maximum almost immediately. My wife had a problem with her foot running through the Seattle airport. The doctor who did her toe amputation was decided to be out of network so that was another $1,100.
I was never unemployed through all this. I had enough vacation and sick time banked to cover it. Cobra didn’t apply. Buying my old insurance wasn’t an option, it was far too expensive without employer backing. Income is too high for assistance (thank god) and I took steps to max out my HSA account, which is good because we drained it twice.
Three 1 week hospital stays (2 for me, 1 for my wife), multiple ER visits, two more major medical procedures… That would be enough to break most people even with good insurance.
So if you read any of that, let me ask you something… Why does the quality of my health care and my quality of life have to depend on who I work for and what insurance companies they choose to work with?
This is the kind of story libertarians can’t imagine because they simply lack an imagination. We don’t choose when we get sick. Your companies merger should have had no impact on your ability to get healthcare. What an absolutely insane thing to read.
Trump’s talking points are centered around Depends… And I guess it Depends on how much shit is in his diapers at a given moment, which then Depends on what he’s talking about
Would it be incorrect to think that Mark Twain already described how scammers feed off the US religious right in “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884). I am referring to “The King” and “the Duke”.
Good article but I think the thing it misses is those that currently make up “the base” on the right seem to share the commonality of wanting to be conned. The Christian nationalists, the conspiracy theorists, the buyers of whatever snake oil are currently on offer all want easy, unnuanced answers that continue to validate whatever they’re used to. They ignore systemic issues in favor of the fear du jour because solving the real problems strike at their sense of identity and they’re willing to believe literally anything rather than face the issues that really matter. A feedback loop has taken hold of the GOP which just keeps cranking them further and further away from any sort of reasonable ideology and instead replaced it with spurious and unfounded anxieties and fears. The media has constantly exacerbated this because it increases their metrics and ad dollars to sell the side show.
This sounds like it might be a really interesting book, for anytime interested in politics, American or otherwise. I wonder how closely this parallels to Brexit, the Freedumb Convoy, and QAnon.
I usually don’t read books about politics, but this one might be an exception.
Socialize industries. Do what countries like Qatar did and give the wealth to the people. Gdi, it’s so obvious, but they’ve got us arguing because the genitals of the person you don’t even know might not match your expectations. The right are led around so fucking easily it’d be embarrassing if they were capable of seeing it.
Many people are voting red because they think it will be better for their personal finances, with promises of lower taxes. They don’t look at the benefits: that use to outweigh the cost, which we’ve mostly lost Even though we still pay high taxes and high cost of living for things that are now for (higher) profit (healthcare, school, etc.). It’s not wrong to try and look at your bottom line, it’s just a short-sighted bottom line.
At least this is the conversation I have with people who consider themselves moderates who lean right and tend to vote Republican.
vox.com
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