"Health" Care

This has been an interesting week. On Sunday night, my forner foster child. Josh, was beaten up with a baseball bat (after being held up at gunpoint and telling the marauders he had no money) on his way home from a SuperBowl party, and refused admission to the first hospital his sister tried to take him to. He was finally taken to John C. Lincoln Hospital, which has a Level 1 Trauma Center.

The injury was severe, although he will live. Every bone in his face was broken, his nose was smashed, his teeth were shattered, and his eye sockets all but destroyed. He will need a least three re constructive surgeries. Never mind the psychological consequences on a kid that already has lost both his parents and, as he aged out of the system, his foster parents.

And, of course, he is uninsured. He is 20, and thought he was immortal. He was also working on and off, sometimes at jobs that provided insurance, sometimes not. So he never registered for ACCCHS, Arizona’s version of Medicaid.

So he was thrown out of the hospital on Thursday, because the reconstructive surgeon can’t get to his case until Monday, and the hospital won’t keep him. He’s enrolled in ACCCHS now, because of course the hospital enrolled him immediately so they ccould get reimbursed for his care. But ACCCHS won’t allow him to stay in. So he goes “home” to sleep on the floor of the apartment his pregnant sister shares with another single mom with two kids.

Then comes Super Tuesday, with all the candidates ranting about the need for universal health care. But none of them saying it should be paid for by anyone but the insured or the employer.

This is an interesting conundrum to me. Let’s just say health care was the most important issue for me, which it is. Who should I vote for? Barack, who says there shouldn’t be a mandate to buy it? Hillary, who says it should be mandated but doesn’t tell us how Josh will pay for it? The Republicans, who want a “free market” solution?

Folks, as far as I can see, nothing would cover Josh, who works part time and intermittently while trying to go to school, or his sister Amanda, who keeps on losing jobs because of her skills deficiencies, or his brother Jerry, who is working for a company that does not offer health insurance and can’t get on ACCCHS because he’s a former felon.

Or the 47 million who “reject” health insurance that is offered to them because they can’t buy it and also buy gas.

Health insurance is not like automobile insurance. You can mandate automobile insurance, and if people can’t afford it, they can take the bus. You can’t just “mandate’ health insurance. Either health care is a right that society provides, or it is not. It’s interesting how the system now works. As the system stands, drug addicts, diabetics who don’t comply with their regimens, and smokers who give themselves COPD can get care, as long as they either can afford to pay for insurance (pay for their sins by buying insurance and shifting the cost of their care to the rest of us) or are dirt poor. In fact, the poorer they are, the better the care. And the worse people take care of themselves, the better the care they get. You can get a heart transplant more easily than you can get a colonoscopy.

It’s the working poor, the people trying to lift themselves out of poverty, who don’t get care. And trust me, one day that will include someone from your family.