random babble…

This is why we need a public option. (Via Crooks and Liars)

Rescission happens too often, as does “cherry picking” by companies of people who are good enough for coverage.

40 million people is another good reason.

My mother has Crohn’s disease.  Never heard of it?  Neither has my spell check, but Mom has had it for as long as I can remember.  She is currently uninsured even after being retired from the State of Michigan.  She lost a good job with benefits due to layoffs from the recession last year.  She currently works in a truck stop while going to school to be a surgical technician.  She can’t get standard health care from a private company because she has a severe pre-existing condition.  If she is able to get coverage (if she could afford it at all with the extremely high premiums) it excludes her digestive system.  She can only get coverage for things she doesn’t need covered and even then it is too high for her to afford right now.  To properly maintain good health she needs to not only follow a pretty specific diet but she also needs several expensive medications just to keep her bowels from contracting painfully and her ulcers from bleeding, little things that allow her to do silly things, like continue to go to work and school.  Right now she can’t get most of those because they are too expensive to pay for out of pocket.  Her only shot at adequate coverage and a reasonably healthy life is a public option.

She is not alone.

I have a family friend who a few years back got married.  After they got married they discovered that his new wife was pregnant.  When they went to enroll her in his employer provided health insurance she was denied for having a “pre-existing condition”.  Because she was already pregnant when they got married.  They later rescinded and covered her (after much, much paperwork and fighting from my friend) but would not cover anything having to do with the pregnancy, and they also didn’t cover the baby when he was born.  Oh, yeah, and he was born 10 weeks early, because she had a bladder infection that caused pre-term labor.  Their son spent over two months in a NICU with no coverage.  They had to fall back on State and Federal aid just to save their son’s life, and it nearly bankrupt them in the process.

If anyone has ever needed a public option it is us.  We need it and we need it twelve years ago.  Right wing talking heads are trying to scare you with lies about “death panels” and horror stories about how the elderly and disabled will be cast aside to die.  They will mislead you with untruths and misinformation to try to scare you out of fighting for healthcare reform.

But we need it, desperately.

40 million lives should matter, many of them children who have done nothing wrong except be born to a family who despite their best efforts could not afford to cover them.

I’m going to write to Congressman Stupak, thanking for his work on Rescission and begging him to support reform and the public option.  I hope you will write to yours and do the same.