Universal Health Care

This post at Stupid Evil Bastard made me appreciate my country very much today.

Since I was first laid off from Ford in February of 2005, with the exception of my brief return to Ford last year before a second lay off after just two and a half months, I’ve been without health care for me and my family. In two years we’ve been to the doctor’s a total of three times paying for the office visits out of pocket and one trip to the dentist we managed to squeeze in during my brief stint last year. We’ve been pretty lucky so far, but it’s starting to catch up with us. I lost one of my fillings last year and haven’t been able to afford getting it replaced. That’s come back to haunt me as I’ve been suffering from minor tooth and ear aches on that side of my head so I’m going to have to address it, out of pocket, sometime this week. My left hip is giving me problems which I mentioned in passing during one of the office visits with our doctor last year and the doctor said that if I had insurance she’d have some tests done, but I can’t afford that at the moment so I just keep trudging on hoping that my hip doesn’t have a major problem. Additionally, Anne’s been having some gastrointestinal problems and Courtney injured her foot in dance class at school that still seems to be bothering her.

I’m not trying to drum up sympathy here, just pointing out that back when we had health care we’d have addressed these issues as soon as we noticed them and could get back to being productive members of society in short order. Now it’s a daily question of: Has the problem gotten so bad that we have to find a way to pay for, at a minimum, an office visit. With my tooth I’ll probably end up having to have the dentist just yank the damned thing out as it tends to be cheaper than anything else they can do, my sister has had to do that in the past as has my wife. I suppose given my redneck heritage it’s somewhat appropriate, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it.

Compared to a lot of people in the same boat as us, our problems are somewhat minor. It was just one month prior to my first lay off that I wrote this entry about my cousin who died from friggin’ pneumonia because she didn’t have health care and couldn’t afford an office visit to find out that she was that seriously sick. Every time one of us gets the sniffles I can’t help but wonder in the back of my head is it just a cold or something more serious?

I said it then and I’ll say it again now: In the richest country on the planet it’s simply ridiculous that we can’t find a way to have a national health care system.

Amen.