The Affordable Care Act — aka “Obamacare” — saved my life. Yes, this is for real. It happened last year. If not for the ACA, I would either be dead and buried or in so much medical debt I would never get out from under it. I thought long and hard before writing about this. But after seeing the crazy things members of the GOP said about Obamacare at their convention and hearing their mantra, “Are you better off than you were four years ago,” I decided to go public about my experience with Obama’s supposedly evil, socialistic government takeover of health care.
When I left Creative Loafing as a full-time employee in late 2005, I continued health insurance coverage through U.S. Department of Labor’s COBRA. A few months later, I started noticing some odd symptoms, which I won’t gross you out by describing further. Finally, a new symptom let me know something was definitely wrong, so I told my doctor. Her eyes widened. Long story short, a couple of tests later, I got the word — I had cancer of the bladder.
Luckily, we had caught it fairly early, so removing it (the cancer, not the bladder, God forbid), although nobody’s idea of a treat, wasn’t as big a deal as I’d anticipated. COBRA covered the vast majority of the cost. Six months later, the urologist discovered the cancer was making a comeback. Soon, I had another successful procedure, after which the doc recommended I undergo a preventative process that’s been effective in thwarting future bladder cancers. But I had a new problem: my COBRA insurance would run out before I could begin the preventative procedures. I wasn’t happy about it, but I decided I’d have to forego the procedures and “wait and see.”
Nearly three years went by without any sign of trouble; I was relieved and rarely thought about cancer anymore. But in late 2009, around the time Congress was going through convulsions over Obama’s health care reform bill, a minor symptom showed up again. My reaction was along the lines of “Oh, hell.” I certainly couldn’t afford treatment, so I started looking for health insurance again. Guess what? Since I had previously had bladder cancer, insurance companies wouldn’t give me the time of day, except for Blue Cross Blue Shield, which offered me a half-assed plan for around $1,500 a month.
Meanwhile, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. Lucky for millions of people, including myself, Obama had insisted on letting individual states create insurance pools — immediately — to benefit folks like me with pre-existing conditions. Gov. Bev Perdue still had a Democratic majority in the legislature, and North Carolina’s federal insurance pool was quickly launched. I signed up. It wasn’t cheap, but was still way better than Blue Cross’ extortionate “offer.” New insurance card in hand, I headed to a new urologist (the old one didn’t accept the new Obamacare insurance).
One of the most surreal experiences of my life will always be when I lay on an examination table, a camera-in-a-tube in my bladder, hearing from the doc that I now had four cancerous tumors, as we watched them on-screen and marveled at how, well, pretty they looked. Four pinkish sea anemones, waving languidly as if they were on the bottom of the sea rather than inside my body, doing their damage.
This time, the surgery (there was no more talk of mere “procedures”) was heavy-duty and recovery was unpleasant and took longer than the first time around. The total bill was enormous, more than I could ever handle, and most of it was covered by, yes, the Affordable Care Act.
During my last visit with the urologist, I asked him what would have happened if the cancer had remained untreated. He began to explain that my bladder would have to be removed, but I interrupted him: “No, I mean what if it had gone untreated, period.” The doc, a likeable guy, was straightforward: “Well, it would kill you.”
I have written several times, including last week, about problems with the Obama administration, and those remain in place. But I also have to give the guy his due. His much-maligned Obamacare program, a good two years before full implementation is finished, saved my life — literally, for real, sure ’nuff, and whatever other words you use to denote down-to-earth, physical reality. I’m still here because of Obamacare. So, yeah, I’d say I’m definitely better off than I was four years ago, and it’s a direct result of Obama’s persistence in getting his flawed but, again, life-saving plan enacted into law. Government social policies do make a difference for the better in people’s everyday lives. Others’ lives have been saved the same way, too. It’s high time we journalists tell those people’s stories.
Related Stories
This article appears in Sep 12-18, 2012.
John,
Glad you made it, bladder cancer took my father. I sincerely hope you stay in the clear.
Obamacare’s state fund worked for you personally, but SOMEONE paid for the “enormous” costs you mention. I wonder who that SOMEONE was. If only there were a way to make each person pay a sum (let’s call them “premiums”) that reflected their risk factors of each individual, and these payments, in aggregate, would pay for all the procedures and drugs (let’s call them “benefits”) of the pool of people paying in. Oh wait; we have that already. It’s called health insurance. The premiums you rejected as too high were in fact probably correct for your risk, weren’t they? Had those insurers covered you at standard rates, they would have been hosed by your subsequent losses far in excess of premiums paid.
You rejected paying for coverage until a low cost (to you) solution came along, and now SOMEONE has to pay for your benefits to the tune of “enormous” amounts, when you should have been footing some of that cost, after all, that’s fair to SOMEONE who doesn’t have a history of bladder cancer and pays his own premiums. Why should SOMEONE now foot the bulk of your benefits? All state insurance funds (healthcare, workers comp, non-standard auto, etc.) have two consequences; they drive down competition by charging below proper risk adjusted rates, and transfer costs to SOMEONE. They are eventually mismanaged, have high expense ratios compared to private peers, and are usually disbanded, sold, spun-off, or remain the bane of insurance markets, as the Florida Citizens property pool and the California workers comp pool have been.
The answer, and anyone in insurance should tell you this, is to make each person pay an amount that reflects their risk factors and the risk of the pool, but backstop only catastrophic losses with a state or federal pool, which prevents SOMEONE from picking up the whole tab, and distributes the costs more fairly while preventing pre-existing screening refusals.
Glad SOMEONE was there for you, buddy, but don’t thank Obama. It wasn’t him that funded the pool.
sincerely, SOMEONE
SOMEONE can’t fathom using any of his tax dollars to pay for something as silly as saving people’s lives. SOMEONE knows full and well that medical care has reached the point of being unobtainable without insurance, and insurance unobtainable to millions of people. SOMEONE thinks they should just die in the street, evidently.
There are plenty of uses of public money that can be debated as frivolous, but I don’t see this as one of them.
Of course the care should be provided. Point to where I said otherwise.
Here is the point, in case you missed it, and apparently you did.
Pay your fair share. Pay an amount that approximates the risk. Before and after a catastrophic medical event; Don’t dump the excess cost on “the system” because that’s code for taxpayers. Remember, as a premium payer, the taxpayer that pays the outrageous health insurance premiums, inflated by medical inefficiency, medical excess and medical inflation, ALREADY covers the median risk of the pool. Now they get to pick up the bill for those who decide coverage is too expensive, but jump in at the last minute to lay the claims at the taxpayers feet. That’s like buying insurance at the scene of an at-fault accident, from a state pool that can’t say no, and which then drops the cost to the taxpayer.
Obamacare also saved my life. In my case it was throat cancer. Would have died in April before my 50th birthday. I thank god every day for being so lucky!
I used to wonder what the world would be like when the “Me” generation grew up. Now we know.
Someone has chosen to ignore the fact that insurance companies don’t have to sell you a policy if they think you might actually make claims. A very large number of people cannot buy insurance at any price, and many more simply cannot afford it. Medical insurance should not be a for profit industry.
Right wing people show there true colors when they express disgust as they sarcastically state “some people think they are entitled to food and healthcare”.
Obama Care is like a cute little puppy at this stage: small, energetic, affordable. But in a few years it is going to grow into an out-of-control great dane sized mongrel that wil be enormously expensive to maintain.
Wrong DLP; John is the “Me” generation, epitomized by the “Why should I have to pay for that? It’s expensive! It should be free to me and SOMEONE else should have to bear the cost.”
I’m GenX, meaning I have to pick up your tab as I have thirty more years to work taking home less than 60% of my income due to Federal and State tax loads, and AMT (a “right-wing” thing) makes sure I get squat for deductions.
I’m not a “right-winger”, or even a republican. I’m a taxpayer who is fed up with the fact that I keep picking up the tab. Pay your share. That’s all I ask. No pre-existing condition pool? Fine, but pay the taxpayer back after receiving the care. Most people will drop the premium after running up the bill. God and the Government, we adore, in times of sickness, not before. The sickness pass and the situation righted, God is forgotten and the taxpayer slighted.
Government can’t pay for anything unless it has first taken. Pay your fair share. If you have expensive surgeries on the taxpayer, why shouldn’t you pay that pool back over the following years? You used the care didn’t you? Starting a high premium pool that accepts pre-existing conditions is great, right up until the people that run up the bill leave because they don’t want to pay the high premiums after receiving the care. And that’s what happens. Watch.
Here we are four years later, and I attach an article that points to what any sane person should have seen as inevitable, the collapse of the exchanges:
“Last fall, UnitedHealth Group Inc. disclosed major losses on policies it had offered through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges. Nor was the country’s largest health insurer alone; competitors including Aetna Inc., Humana Inc. and Cigna Corp. have described the difficulties they face in attempting to make exchange-based offerings profitable.
So it is no surprise that UnitedHealth announced that it would reduce its exchange offerings for 2017. What did surprise at least some observers was the scale of the decision. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company will reduce its offerings from 34 states this year to “only a handful” going forward. In the same conference call, UnitedHealth steepened its projected losses on exchange plans for 2016 to $650 million. In contrast, the company’s overall earnings for the first quarter were better than expected.
Let’s break it down. UnitedHealth is making money in its employer-sponsored health insurance business. It is making money in its government-paid, nonexchange health insurance business. It is making money from individual health insurance policies sold outside the Affordable Care Act exchanges. But it is losing money hand over hypodermic on policies sold through the Obamacare exchange network. How come?
Simply because customers on the exchanges tend to buy insurance when they are sick and drop it if they get getter. They do so knowing that under Obamacare rules, insurers must sell them insurance again during the next open enrollment period, or even sooner if they qualify for a special exemption. You could not design a better system for making medical insurance a money-losing proposition if you tried.”