A Real Obamacare Success story – Me [View all]

[dballance]

As some of you know I've been unemployed on and off (mostly unemployed) for the last couple of years so things have been difficult overall. In December I signed up for Oregon's health care plan because Oregon was one of the states that extended Medicaid. Since I've been paying Social Security Medicare and Medicaid insurance out of my paycheck for over 30 years really don't feel guilty signing onto the plan.

I got my insurance card from the administrator called Family Healthcare in early January. I put the card in my wallet like I always do with insurance cards. Since I'm a relatively healthy non-smoker, non-diabetic I pretty much thought that was last I'd see of that card for some time. Well, the Spaghetti Monster or whatever God, Goddess, demon, etc. decided otherwise.

On January 26 I slipped and fell and broke my left humerus. I did quite a number on it. In the ER they just looked at it, through me in a sling and scheduled me for surgery the next day. The break was so bad there was no chance of just setting it and putting it in a cast or brace to heal. At the ER they took my Family Healthcare card just plug it into the system and I was all good to go.

I had my first surgery on January 28. It seemed to go okay. Except the following Tuesday I was back at the doctor's office because it was oozing pretty bad. They cleaned it up change the dressing and set my next follow-up for one week out. At that follow-up, it was determined that the first surgery wasn't working. So they scheduled me for a revision surgery. That was done on Feb 12. Turns out that didn't go any better than the first one. And to add insult to injury I got a staph infection. The effect of that was they had to schedule a third surgery to rip out all the hardware clean out my wound thoroughly and start me on a 6 to 8 week antibiotic regimen.

On 26 February I had my third surgery. As I said they took out all the hardware, and the top of the humorous that is the ball part. At this time I was officially diagnosed with osteomyelitis – a bone infection. They kept me in the hospital for five nights to give me antibiotics and monitor the cultures they took to see if they grew any new bacteria. I got released on March 3.

Now, I'm on a 6 to 8 week home infusion regimen of antibiotics. When the nurse came to train me how to do the infusion she looked at my insurance and said "You are on Family Care, so you're 100% covered."

You are 100% covered is the theme of my insurance coverage right now. So far, I've had three surgeries, one ER visit, four office visits and the associated pain meds (oxycodone). All with zero expenses to me. Which is great since there's no way in hell I could have paid anyway. I would become yet another person who had to file bankruptcy because of a medical problem.

Here's a pic of my x-ray from 26 January at the ER. Hopefully I got the link to work properly. If you are thinking "OUCH" then you got it right.