The Nation: Kate Michaelman's Health Insurance Nightmare

[Captain Hilts]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090427/michelman?rel=hp_picks

My husband is a retired college professor, and what the teaching profession lacks in salary it often makes up for with generous benefits. His health insurance would cover most of the emergency costs related to the fall--the surgeries, the hospitalization, the drugs. But in the astronomical sums the cost of medical care often entails, "most" is not a reassuring word. Months later, as his discharge from the hospital drew near, I sat in my living room looking at the bills piling up on the table. The co-pays, uncovered care and other costs had already reached $8,000, and we had virtually nothing left.

Seven years of caring for my husband and our daughter, who had no insurance at the time of her accident, had all but exhausted our savings. As my husband's condition deteriorated, I was caught in a trap. We needed my income, but the kind of political consulting work that was my forte was incompatible with the demands of caring for him. It was simply not possible for me to be available for him 24/7 and simultaneously to work overtime, traveling for days or weeks on the campaign trail, to bring in the income that would keep us afloat.

[Suich]

1. Wow!

You would think that Long Term Care Insurance would pay for long term care insurance, wouldn't you?

I wish the Michaelman's well but I don't feel very optimistic about their situation.

[malaise]

2. Privatized health care -Richard Nixon's legacy

What a heartbreaking article. No one is safe with this privatized health care system.

[waiting for hope]

3. I hope she can help with

getting Universal Health Care - I has always admired her tenacity. K&R!

[liberalhistorian]

4. This is just one of the many reasons

why mandates requiring everyone to buy insurance is NOT health care reform and will NOT work!! Get the damned bloodsucking insurance companies that are killing us out of the way, then we can truly discuss real reform. Then again, like that's ever gonna happen with their clout and ability to keep congress in their pockets. The same congress that has the best health care plan imaginable for and extremely low price, under $100 a month in most cases, with almost no co-pays, paid for by us, the very taxpayers who are either uninsured or getting screwed over by an insurance company or financially ruined by an accident or injury.

[Captain Hilts]

5. If health insurance were run like car insurance, then everybody would be covered.

But if the govt. permits insurance companies to pick and choose whom to insure, game over. Just as the insurance companies do with health insurance - no pre-existing, no unemployed, and homeowner's insurance is pulling out of Florida. Allstate is leaving Florida. Why is Allstate permitted to leave Florida? How many other companies will follow?