A couple weeks ago I went to the dentist, and although I didn\u2019t have any pain or other issues, my dentist found the beginnings of a small cavity. I went in a week later to have it filled; less than an hour later I was on my way. A short time later, I got my bill for $150 (which, when I thought about it, seems like a really good deal). My insurance paid for the majority, I paid the rest, and that was it.<\/p>\n
All in all, it\u2019s a pretty mundane story. Hardly worth even mentioning, you\u2019d think. But taking a closer look at the pieces, it\u2019s not unremarkable at all. I\u2019m very fortunate that I can engage in such a transaction so easily at so little cost to me; for countless people, that just can\u2019t happen, and the distance between my situation and theirs is not as great as one would think.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What it boils down to is the fact that I have good health insurance. My whole life I\u2019m been fortunate to have health insurance, from the time that I was a child getting allergy shots, to college when I had kidney stones and a severe case of tonsillitis and mono, to now when I go to the dentist. Throughout all that time, I (and my parents) had to pay very little out of pocket for care, even when I went to the emergency room on multiple occasions in college. I could very easily have become sick during the brief times I didn\u2019t have insurance, such as between college and getting my first job with coverage, and such an event could have devastated my finances, as shaky as they were straight out of college. However, I was lucky, and still am.<\/p>\n
Without insurance, the above story would have been quite different. I probably would not be going to the dentist every six months for checkups, and hence that cavity would not have been discovered until it had grown much larger, large enough to hurt. At that point, I\u2019d have to weigh the pain against going in to have it looked at; without insurance, I would have to pay the entire cost of the checkup myself. When I finally went in, since I had waited so long it would be a far larger problem, and undoubtedly more expensive.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just a toothache. What about when I showed up at the ER with tonsils the size of golfballs and difficulty breathing? (Note: when you hear an ER nurse say \u201cOh my god\u201d after examining you, it\u2019s not a positive sign) I was in college at the time, without a job, and the bill from that would have been very difficult to pay off had insurance not covered it. Again, had I gotten sick six months later, out of college, I would have been on the hook for the entire bill; it was simply a matter of chance that I got sick when I did.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t believe that a person\u2019s financial stability should be tied to the roulette wheel of when and where they get sick. For this reason, I support universal health care. Also, for this reason, I\u2019m incredibly saddened by the governor\u2019s line-item veto of General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC), eliminating it entirely in the second year of the budget. This is health care for tens of thousands of people making less than $8,000 a year. Yes, the program is expensive: $700 million over two years. Maybe other states don\u2019t have a comparable program. But these are generally older people, some homeless, some veterans, many with chronic medical conditions, many with mental health issues or chemical dependency issues. To me it isn\u2019t overly \u201cgenerous\u201d to help these people; even putting aside the economic arguments, such as the fact that cutting their coverage now will just increase costs later, it just seems wrong to kick these people when they are down.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been fortunate in my life so far, but it only takes one catastrophe at the wrong time to change all of that, such as the story yesterday of the successful lawyer, wife, and mother who became struck with debilitating depression and was unable to work full-time. That could be me, or a family member, or a friend, or somebody else in the future. It\u2019s hard, perhaps impossible, not to feel empathy for people in these situations.<\/p>\n
On a final note: when I was listening to the debate during the veto override attempt of the elimination of GAMC, the speeches, stories, and passion displayed by so many on the House floor made me proud to be a Democrat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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