Health care reform is not simply about getting health insurance for those without it. As the story below shows, many folks approaching bankruptcy actually have medical insurance:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/122032.html###
Her coverage, salary, savings don't pay billsEverything she earns in her second job, handling marketing and promotions at the Galaxy Theater in Cary, pays medical bills. Still, she has fallen $3,000 behind, and has put off getting care from a specialist who discovered a tumor on her pituitary gland at the base of her brain. The unhealthy pituitary, likely a rare disorder called Cushing's disease, has derailed her immune system and probably triggered heart and lung problems.In the depths of her despair, she and her friends got to thinking: Maybe they could hold a bake sale and raise some money for Yaman to get the care she needs.
But that would help only Yaman. Instead, they decided to give away Moon Pies at a strategic location to press the larger issue of health-care reform.
"This is not how health care should be handled in the United States," Yaman says. "I've paid my bills. I've paid my way. And still, I've become a charity case."Yaman was a model of healthy living. She ate right. She was active.
A marathon walker, she routinely knocked out six or eight hours of walking.
She juggled caring for a teenage daughter, raising a preschool granddaughter while the youngster's parents were overseas in the military, and working her two jobs, plus another gig editing documents for a company in India.
She loved it.
"I have been the luckiest person in the world," she says. "It was a great life. We lived meagerly, but had great friends, and I loved my jobs."
Then in November 2006, she got the flu and never seemed to recover. By December of that year, her body began to fail her in bizarre ways. Her immune system was shot, she was dangerously anemic, her muscles cramped, her heart valves began failing, she developed asthma, her skin grew thin and burst.
In one year, though she tried to maintain a walking regimen and a healthy diet, she gained 80 pounds.
As her symptoms escalated, so did the number of doctors she saw: rheumatologist, hematology-oncologist, cardiologist, pulmonologist, dermatologist, gynecologist, orthopedist and psychiatrist.
Although she was covered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, the co-payment for specialists was $60. Insurance paid part of the cost of the laboratory tests and scans, but her share of those bills quickly ate up her extra income.
And then there were the prescriptions -- 10, currently.
"It all adds up," she says.
By July, Yaman had blown through her flexible medical savings plan, which allots her $3,600 a year to help cover out-of-pocket medical expenses. About that time, she finally saw an endocrinologist, who specializes in hormones and metabolism, and he wanted to begin the testing process for Cushing's disease.
But she was broke, and for weeks she put it off. Finally, she decided she had to do something."I went to his office with all my credit cards, with notes on them with how much money I had available on each one, and put them on the counter and asked, 'How much care can I get for this amount of plastic?'" she said.
The doctor told her to forget about the money, but she's proud.
"I don't want to be a charity case," she said. "If people could give me hours in the day, I would work them. But there are not enough hours in the day for me to earn the money to pay my medical bills."Many of Yaman's friends have sent checks to the doctor to cover her care, and her circle expanded as news got out about her predicament. She has received 500 e-mail messages offering support, including 17 marriage proposals from men in European countries with universal health care.
What Yaman really wants is a better U.S. system.
She sees universal coverage as a necessity, and a way to get needed care without bankrupting patients.
"This should not be a partisan issue," she said. "It's a human issue."
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