Health care reform already needs a reformation (a personal story)
I’ve long-believed the health care system in the United States was broken. When there was some talk and hope of honest bipartisan work to be done on this issue, I actually got a little excited. I’m a pastor who serves people from every rung of the socio-economic ladder; you can’t do that and not understand that something about this mess needed to be fixed.
But, like many, I was frustrated with the fix that Washington introduced this year. I’m fairly well-informed, but not rabidly involved; I preach Biblical morality from the pulpit, but I don’t do partisan politics in the Church. Our congregation has both radical Republicans and devoted Democrats. I don’t pay attention to haters on either side. When this health reform bill passed, however, it was’t difficult for me to imagine the possibility for chaos and mismanagement.
That was before my own experience with it.
Two months ago, my wife and I applied for new individual health insurance for our family. I am now the only employee/pastor in a church plant, and we could no longer be on a group plan.
The application was supposed to take two weeks; after ten, we finally got in touch with somebody who could help us. “Health Reform” was their only answer for the delay. It seems that two of our kids didn’t qualify for the plan we wanted, one because of a very minor outpatient surgical procedure that still needed to take place and the other for a couple of bouts of seasonally induced asthma he had a few years back. Though my daughter needs a simple and common procedure and my son has hgh vitamins never used the inhaler they prescribed to him, they apparently don’t qualify.
On the other hand, they are not supposed to turn kids away, now. Apparently one of the provisions of the new health law is that an insurer cannot deny insurance to a child due to a pre-existing condition. That’s one of the parts of the law many people celebrated. But, of course, it’s not that simple.
We were told they couldn’t deny our children, but that they “didn’t know what to do with them”, either. That’s why we were in limbo for the last 2 months. When we finally pushed through all the bureaucracy and spoke with a supervisor of a supervisor, we discovered that we would need two policies: one for the three who were “healthy”, and another radically more expensive policy for the two with the “conditions“.
We’re still in limbo and not quite sure what to do. My wife and I are reasonably well-educated and make a wage we can live on; I’m sure we’ll figure something out. But for all those who felt like health reform is their salvation—or touted it as the salvation of all those who were without insurance—I want to warn you, I think it’s going to get worse for people, not better.
Health care in our country needs true reform, not a political shell-game. Politicians can score points by passing legislation that promises to provide better coverage to more Americans, but as we see the real rules roll out, I fear that more and more people will actually be trapped in a system that is not designed to help at all.