Episode 24: Down the Rabbit Hole aka the U.S. Health Care System

Should you find yourself on the cusp of death in these United States, be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Okay, so we’re all afraid on the cusp of death, so how about this:  Should you find yourself sick for any reason in these United States, be afraid.  Be very afraid.

I live close to the finest medical institutions on this planet, and I have arguably the best insurance company covering my care, so my care should be top-notch and should not end up bankrupting me, right?

Well, it was a different insurance company covering me when I did have to go bankrupt due to losing my job because I was ill—yes, I know that’s illegal, but you just try to fight it and see how useful that in—in my case, I gave up after one of three appeals because I was so darned sick, so exhausted, and my mind and abilities to do paperwork were not up to the task, and so I let it go.

Let it go.

Let everything go.

Because when you’re sick in the United States today, that’s likely what you’ll have to do.

The issues abound, and I intend to take each one on in future episodes, but for today I’ll focus on what I believe to be the underlying problem, the fundamental issue escalating costs and reducing coverage.

Episode 23: A Sabine Christmas

I'm coming to this topic raw, unpolished.  Uncertain of what I want to say or even how to begin to say it.  I imagine I will massage this episode innumerable times in the future, and I'm not sure I'll get very far with this very first attempt.

I want to write about it, to connect with the persons and places and emotions I connected with then, but the task is daunting on so many levels, the most daunting being the pain I feel when I think of her, lying there in the hospice bed, sleeping most of the time, thankfully--she wasn't in a lot of pain most days, but exceptions certainly came, and even if medication kept the physical pain at bay the psychic pain was palpable to us all.

We tried to do what she'd wanted.

Sabine knew she was dying, and she and I had shared emails in which we talked about what we'd want in our last days.  I'd visited her a year ago in Albania, and I was dumbfounded that she had lived another year after her surgeon told her they'd decided her cancer was inoperable--in other words, it had won.  The only way to defy Sabine's determination to live was to be relentless and brutal, and her cancer was both--though for the longest time she'd say she had cancer, but cancer didn't have her.