health insurance | WEGGIEBOY'S BLOG by Doug Thomas

I probably should have my e-mail address removed from Senator Johanns’ update list. I read these things, and I boil! So, when I found the following in my in box, I read it, hoping against hope I could handle it without feeling compulsion to respond back:

Senator Johanns e-Update
November 14, 2013

I asked to hear from you last week about how Obamacare has impacted your families. I received stories from more than one thousand Nebraskans, the majority of whom relayed details about their increased premiums and cancelled plans. When I spoke before the Senate today, I highlighted a story from one family in Boelus, Neb.

We need to address the growing problems with this failed law, which has led to millions of Americans being dropped from their insurance despite President Obama’s repeated promises that they would be able to keep their current health coverage. Unfortunately, the President is still trying to tweak the law instead of accepting that the only real solution is its full repeal. The latest tweak came today with his announcement that cancelled policies could be reissued for one more year. But, many experts have said there simply isn’t time to reinstate policies cancelled by Obamacare. President Obama promised that if Americans liked their plans, then they could keep them. He didn’t say they could keep them for one more year. Let’s be clear, this isn’t a fix.

This law is broken and even its supporters are beginning to understand that. The President is simply trying to convince them to accept tweaks when the only real solution is a full repeal.

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He posted this video on his e-mail as well.
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God help me, but I sent the good Senator yet another rant on the Affordable Care law:

Dear Senator Johanns:

Why don’t we forget the many millions who now don’t have to worry about getting health care because of a pre-existing condition, all those people under 26 years old who can continue on their parents’ health care insurance, those with major health issues who don’t have to worry about lifetime caps, or those too caught up in Republican and Koch brother distortions about the law to realize that the alternative proposed by the Republicans is nothing, nada, zero change to the shameful health care system in this country where one in four Texans (for the worst example I’m aware of) are without affordable insurance? As best I can tell, that’s what your party stands for.

In the meantime, while you and your party are worrying the healthcare website bone to death, nothing is happening toward immigration reform (even the one your TP colleague Senator Rubio was involved in and the Senate passed…), a comprehensive job creation plan, long term funding for the US Government (which many in your party seem to forget pays them, courtesy of people like me the taxpayer, at least $174,000 a year – wasted money! – for doing damn little but obstructing any forward movement in anything), education (the cornerstone of our nation’s future), the infrastructure (may you NOT be on any bridge crumbling into the Mississippi!), or anything else that truly matters to anyone outside of the Congress and its bunker in Washington.

As someone who has a pre-existing condition (Wegener’s granulomatosis), I once had to accept crap insurance at over $1000 a month or go without. Since I, as a retiree, am not getting $174,000 a year for doing nothing but being disagreeable, I ended up going without insurance for 15 months because I couldn’t afford insurance to tide me over between the end of COBRA and my eligibility for Medicare. You don’t know anything about WG (most likely – it’s a rare disease), but going without coverage is a death sentence if you have a flare. I managed to stay in remission for the whole 15 months, but believe me, I sure wished I had one of those Congressional health plans waiting in case a flare came on or the ACA could have started before 2014! Last year this time, I had a series of illnesses that I didn’t see my doctor about because I was afraid I’d end up in the hospital, unable to pay without destroying my retirement nest egg, which is less than two years of your salary. Frankly, I spent a lot of last fall in bed, suffering symptoms that recalled what I went through when I came down with Wegener’s granulomatosis: I was frightened, prepared for death if it came to that, mad as hell at America and its odd priorities, as defined by the multimillionaire Republican candidate for President and the lying fellow running with him for Vice President.

The President, at least, compromised with your party to come up with the ACA, based on the Republican/Heritage Foundation model Governor Romney and the Massachusetts legislature implemented in that state. Your party, in the spirit of sedition, spoiled brat obstructionism, disloyalty to the people of America who didn’t have the Congressional health care plan or any other insurance for a variety of reasons, has done nothing but bitch, whine, moan and shut down the government for 16 days at considerable cost to the country in GDP, international prestige, in-country suffering.

Repealing the law is no solution, nor is stepping backwards to “let” people keep crap policies that don’t really cover their health care needs at any price. I’m sorry the President was forced into accepting that trap – the extension of crap policies that don’t meet the law – your party so skillfully, willfully pushed him into.

There is considerable concern about the President’s “lie”, but it doesn’t approach the disturbing layer of disinformation, distortions, obstructionism, Koch brother sabotage of the law, and just plain lies coming from your side. I believe you are an honest agent (certainly I voted for you for Governor and wasn’t disappointed…!), but your party is bankrupt of ideas, morality, integrity, and any interest in doing the job we taxpayers pay you to do. I used to be proud to be a Republican, but am glad I changed my registration after McConnell announced the Republican Party’s sole purpose was to make the President a one term president. I lost respect for Congress the day I realized he was, and your party is, dead serious about spoiling any chance of the President has of achieving his agenda.

Sincerely,

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Grrr! He asked for input, and I gave it.

My word! The last time I posted, it was the middle of summer, July 31st! Perhaps the cooler weather will prompt me to return to this blog.

A lot happened in that time, mostly management of my mother’s and my financial and insurance business, something I don’t want to relive.

At this point, I don’t think I have insurance coverage. I’ve become one of those unfortunates who fall under the status “has pre-existing condition”. It’s a big ‘un, too. Wegener’s granulomatosis. Not on the Nebraska Comprehensive Health Insurance Pool list of pre-existing conditions they cover.

Well, there is one form of vascular disease- WG is a vascular disease- on the list, but it relates of arterial issues arising from smoking. Wegener’s granulomatosis isn’t that. Smoking!? And what about these other “pre-existing conditions”? Alcoholism. Attempted suicide. Cancer survivor.

I’m here to tell you, if you are going to have a pre-existing condition in THIS country, the United States of America, it better not be an orphan disease!

“I’m here to tell you…”

That expression crept into my awareness after I first came down with Wegener’s granulomatosis in March or April 2003. Surviving that initial flare, surviving treatment with Cytoxan and Prednisone (the standard treatment for severe cases then and largely now, and known among weggies as the “Toxic cocktail”), that phrase took on new meaning and life.

“I am here to tell you,” I’d say. It wasn’t a given before. I was near death, with lungs and kidneys under assault by my own immune system. “I’m here to tell you,” I’d say. And I meant it!

I. Am. Here. To. Tell. You! I am here to tell you that America’s healthcare system is failing me just now, its insurance side at least, and I hope and pray that my health holds out until the Republican- and insurance company-opposed healthcare reforms phase in or I reach the age where Medicare kicks in, if that will do the trick.

I’m waiting now for a call or an e-mail from BCBS’s local agent to let me know if I am “in” or I am “out”.

If I am “in”, I get to pay too much for less insurance than I had under my company, then COBRA, plans. And be grateful to a healthcare system that values dollars over people, rich people over poor, the advantaged over the disadvantaged, umm… I hear violins!

[“Can Jimmy Stewart return from heaven and play me in the tragic movie I’m playing in my mind. Yes? Oh, good!”]

If I am “out”, I probably will survive. I’ll even set money aside for a rainy day when my body’s auto-immune system runs amok, again, as probability tells me it most likely will before I die of it or its complications.

[I must get to work on that obituary and funeral arrangements. I’m a veteran, so should qualify for a burial by Uncle Sam in the new veteran’s cemetery built on top of an old prairie dog town where I used to watch burrowing owl chicks feed on grasshoppers brought to them by their parents. I’ll like that!]

These will be days of uncertainty, but not days bereft of hope. My faith in God, tempered by this terrible illness, is key to that. That and the fact that God in His infinite wisdom had the good sense to create cats, of which I have one very amusing and companionable specimen, Louie.

I’m here to tell you, that’s Louie in the photo in the super hero suit he’ll wear when he rescues me from this quagmire! Good kitty!