How a Medical Crisis Put a Family in Financial Ruin

Snipped from TheNation.com.

This story is a must read. It covers a personal account of how a family ended up in financial ruin because of America’s broken and profit-centered health care. It covers abortion, chronic disease, insurance coverage, politics and, first and foremost, a factual reality check for those that think our health care is fine.

Here is a small portion of the article:

The fraying financial thread by which we were already hanging was now certain to snap. When I heard the awful sound of my husband’s body hitting the concrete outside the hospital, I knew the modicum of independence to which he had clung for so long was gone. He was discharged into an assisted-living facility, where most of the cost was excluded from both his private long-term-care insurance and Medicare. At $9,000 a month, the bills accumulated quickly.

Recently, we decided to bring him home, although the doctors would have preferred that he stay at a facility with full-time supervision. But this was a mathematical decision, not a medical one: we do not have the money it costs to keep him there. I had already stopped working, to care for him; our savings are nearly depleted; and his pension is not nearly large enough to pay the bills.

Today he needs nearly round-the-clock professional help at home–less than the cost of the assisted-living facility but still far more than we have. I have spent recent weeks looking for a job that can add at least enough to my husband’s pension and our Social Security benefits to cover the cost of his care. It is a dilemma familiar to so many women–finding work that can pay for care but also leave time for providing it.

The time is drawing near when, job or no job, the expenses will simply be more than we have. I am coming full circle, back to where so many women’s lives begin and end–and where my career as an activist began: jobless, unsure how to pay the next month’s bills, caring for a family that depends on me for survival–and utterly and deeply determined that something about our country must fundamentally change.

Read Full Article Here!