No insurance. No doctor. You’re screwed. (part 2)

This is part two in a series I am doing this week on health care reform, from a personal viewpoint. Given the fact that I’ve lost a home, ruined my credit and spent ten years being turned away from mainstream medical care, due to not having health insurance, I have some input to lend here.

Let me recap my story briefly:  A decade ago, I had a stage 3 cancer. Our business failed. The health insurance was not able to be maintained.  I got divorced shortly after my cancer went into remission, leaving me with hundreds of thousands of dollars of business debt, medical bills and five small children, zero insurance, and no job. (Read yesterday’s story or the tab here, “Who is Mrs. Bankrupt Anyway” for the ugly details). I cleaned offices at night to go to college and take care of my kids because it paid well, and I didn’t have to pay childcare. But I also was unable to get any sort of Medicaid, nor was I able to afford insurance with premiums in excess of $700.00 a month. 

In that short paragraph, I’ve just summarized countless tears, chronic depression and pain, folks.

 Try telling your kids how glad you are to be cancer free and in nearly the same breath, add,  ”We’re losing our house, children.”  It’s rather difficult to be as cheerful as you’d like. 

With 144 creditors, and in excess of 350K  (nearly all of them medical bill related), it was only a matter of time before my 70K home was attached with liens. I struggled to pay anything. I was constantly getting hauled into court for judgements. 

I’ve been told a thousand times by people, “As long as you pay $10.oo a month, no creditor can do anything to you”.  (  A giant LOL to that!)

Wrong. Wake up and smell the health care coffee, people. 

 Since most hospitals are not privately owned, they are not  likely to cut you a deal.

 Generally hospitals require you to pay off balances in full within a year, or the account is turned over to collections. Collections in turn adds a fee, charges interest, and typically files judgements and requires you to appear in court every few months, even if you can’t pay anything at all. I am convinced if they saved all that attorney money, it would cut all our medical bills in half.

It’s rather humilating to stand before the judge, month after month, and relate that you are working, but too poor too pay anything more because you had too many creditors to divide up your income by.

At even $10 per creditor a month, given the number of creditors, I was looking at  payments of $1,440.00 to medical bills alone, plus other expenses related to raising five kids, housing, etc. (And incidentally that was more than I was earning a few months).

What’s it like to be uninsured for a decade and have chronic health issues? Can a doctor refuse to treat you? Aren’t there places to obtain medical care?

Being uninsured for a healthy person is, I am sure, difficult. Being uninsured for a person who needs 10K a year in scans, blood work, thyroid medicine, and has a low immune system is beyond difficult.

Those who have health insurance, if they need medication simply see the doctor, obtain script, fill script. 

• Average cost, to see physician, with insurance- $30.00
• Average cost medication with insurance, $20.00

Those without health insurance, here’s what it looks like:

Step one: Find a doctor who will treat you with no insurance. Call 15 offices. If you owe any of the hospitals attached to the doctors office, you must pay a payment to the hospital and pay physician in full. (If they will see you).

• Average cost of primary care physician w/o insurance- $ 125.00 Specialist average cost- $200 and up.
• Average minimum cost of payment to hospital before seeing physician- $50.00- $100.00
• Average cost of prescription w/0 insurance- $20-50.00 or higher

This of course, is IF a doctor will see you without insurance. Suddenly, doctors advertising  for new patients in newspapers are, “no longer taking patients” when I’ve called.  That happened to me three times.  

Another time, an oncologist who saw me only after being begged by a friend, gave me a whole five minutes of his time. He told me to go home and wait with a lump on my neck for six months and then he would, “See if we needed tests.”

If you look at the American Cancer Societies guidelines, (especially for a two time cancer patient), they suggest any suspicious lump be biopsied after a few weeks. 

And several physicians ask that you “pre-pay” before they even see you, and with cash. (As if they assume low-life humans with medical bills also must bounce checks, too).

Try tossing in eye exams, contacts or glasses. (Add a few extra hundred bucks a year).

Heaven help you if you need to visit, (gasp), a DENTIST. There you can hope to get away with $500.00 by the time they do x-rays, cleaning, visit.  If you need more than that, odd’s are you can’t afford it. Break a tooth? Have a cavity? Better pray you win the lottery, cause you will add at least several hundred dollars, if not thousands.

I’ve been to the dentist twice in ten years. And I wear 30 day contacts for four – six months these days to delay out the costs. I take left over anti-biotics from friends, or ones that my kids are allergic to. Once I took anti-biotics a vet gave my dog. I am serious.

This lack of health care and debt becomes a self propogating cycle, too.

I have had to resort to going to the ER, (which only incurred yet more costs) but could not afford the cash out of my pocket, when I had pnemonia to see a primary care physician. That particular visit, I needed an X-ray, anti-biotics, and an exam. I had a 103 temp and couldn’t breathe. The only physician who could have seen me, would have charged $125.00 for a visit and an extra $125.00 for a chest x-ray.  Anti-biotics would have added an extra $75.00.

Some how I didn’t remember to have an extra $325.00 laying around when I got ill that day with pnemonia.

Lately, I am really thrilled to have found a doctor who thumbs his nose at conventional health care pricing and actually sees me at a much reduced price. I am thinking of calling the Catholic church to have him cannonized. If there is anyone we should contemplate cloning it might be him. But it took me seven years to find this doc. And it doesn’t solve the issue of tests, scans, medication or anything really exciting like mammograms. I’d kiss the ground of a dentist who’d see me for cheap too.

Tomorrow, I’d like to talk about what happens from this point to credit, after the fall of medicial bills has hit and you are deep in the winter of debt. I’d like to to give you the side of  what not having health care has cost this mom of five, and what it costs society. There’s another side to this picture of health care. That will be my final part of the Health Care saga. You’ll either be thrilled or enlightened or enraged, I am sure, when I’m done.