Huge Increase in Uninsured Americans

This probably isn't a news story for many of you. It wasn't for us (though it did make me feel less alone). We haven't had health insurance for about three years. With DH being self-employed, it is just too high for us to pay. When we last had insurance it was costing us 1200.00 a month. We couldn't keep up with that.

This is a sad fact of life in our country that many of us aren't insured and because of that we don't get proper preventative care which leads to illness becoming severe before we seek attention and greater bills being created because of the delay. Last year I had to have surgery on a suspicious lymph node. All of the appointments, surgery, tests cost over 10,000.00. The hospital ended up writing off most of it, but I am not unaware, that that cost has to be borne somewhere else.

We are fed a lot of information (or maybe misinformation) about countries that provide government run health care. There are pros and cons to it like there are to anything else. I have heard that we have the best medicine in the world because the researchers are funded by our private health care industry. However, if more and more people are going bankrupt, or having their bills written off or are otherwise burdening the government with medical bills that can't be paid, doesn't it seem like universal health care could balance that cost out? Money spent on people being sick, could be spent on research instead, because if people could afford health care, then they would be more likely to get preventative care and not get as sick as a result.

We have had first hand experience with government run health care. We were in Canada four or five years ago visiting DH who was on a contract there. My son got his hand caught in a museum exhibit and I honestly thought his fingers were broken. (We won't get into the museum negligence here who admitted the exhibit was broken and waiting repairs, but didn't offer to cover any medical expenses).

So we had to go to the hospital. We were with the family of one of DH's coworker's, so they took us to a children's hospital/emergency room. We were there a total of 2 hours (the same amount of time or way better than emergency rooms here in the U.S.). During that time, we were seen, DS was x-rayed and bandaged (nothing was broken, thank God), and we were sent on our way. The doctor didn't give the impression of rushing from one patient to the next, there wasn't a long, long wait and my DS was taken care of in a wonderful manner. The cost of this adventure was 126.00! Yes, you heard me 126.00 and wouldn't have been that had I been a Canadian citizen.

In March, my children got the flu. I had had it and I was soooo miserable, that I bit the bullet and took the kids to the doctor to get them Tamiflu. The cost of our doctor visit (charged for both children, even though they had the same thing and were seen at the same time) was 200.00! Then the medicine was another 200.00 (two prescriptions for Tamiflu and some heavy duty cough medicine for all of us! Talk about sticker shock!!!!!

So that's my 2 cents! Feel free to share yours!