The Working Poor and American Health Care
They work 40+ hours a week, make just enough to pay rent, utilities and put food on their tables when they are lucky. Their jobs do not provide health care and they make to much money to qualify for subsidized health care.
When they get sick, they go to work anyway because they do not get sick days. They work until they are so sick they can no longer go to work. They go to the emergency room. There they are treated so that they won’t die today and are given a prescription for medicine that they cannot afford to pay for.
They go back to work, having lost a day or two and hope they can pay rent, utilities and put food on their tables because of the lost work.
This is the great health care system our conservative Republican friends think is so great.
Yup! Been there done that. Had a ruptured appendix. No health coverage on the job. Was working 50 hours a week… Job said I would be eligible next time the insurance window opened… My body didn’t wait. I paid off 54,000 dollars of health care debt off, and when I got disabled 4 years later… Didn’t have a dime to my name.
Paid in all my working life. Now the right calls me a fraud. And I still can’t get my hips replaced. You bet your ass I am bitter.
Life would be better if I lived in another country.
Sad.
EXACTLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ARGGGGGGGGGGG…I’ll be back with more!
And they will be so much better off when the gubment starts taking $60-$80 a week out of their paychecks to pay for their new Obama-Care. They’ll be so much better off when their companies shut their doors or let them go just before 2014 to got under the 24 employee range so the companies don’t have to provide health insurance. They’ll be so much better off…and the rich won’t hurt…as Obama gave them trillions in stimulus & tarp. But Obama didn’t givbe a dang thing to the working poor…just made life that much harder on them.
Republicans aren’t just the party of NO, they are also the party of ME,ME,ME. They are so self absorbed that can’t see past their own Pinocchio noses. Not all are like the idiots that you find here, but way too many of them are.
That was the situation with my wife before she lost the job altogether. If she was lucky enough to get the 40 instead of only 25-30. There were no “benefits” whatever. Sure not enough money to buy insurance and peanut butter too. She had to go once or maybe twice to the ER. We still getting letters about how we will risk our credit rating if we don’t pay the hundreds of dollars they want. HAhahahhaaaa….morons. Neither of us has the credit to buy a candy bar already. Yeah, Mango. Sorry.
Oh, John! I hope you don’t mind my blogging in your comment section!
Here we are, allegedly the greatest nation on the planet, and we can’t get shit straight around here. People assume that just because you’re poor, you qualify for medicaid, and it’s just not true. You HAVE to have a qualifying condition aside from being destitute, usually. The qualifications are – be disabled and/or on Social Security, be pregnant or a parent, or some other qualifying event such as foster care or something.
Of course even when we have what’s considered a “premium” insurance such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield, there are still issues at hand. Sure, they pay 85%. But, aside from their premiums, they also have a very high deductible to meet before they start covering. I think recently, about 4 years ago, they’d pay for “preventative maintenance” right off the bat. But, if you got sick? Uh, uh, uh! You have to meet the deductible… so, for the first, say $800/person, you still pay full price to see the doctor. So even at that, you miss a couple days worth of work, and then have to pay, you’re still having to worry if you have enough for rent and utilities because now days, you end up choosing if you want higher pay and no health benefits, or lower pay with health benefits… If you’re trying to even survive on $10/hr/ft, you’re still struggling if you’re a married couple. If you have children? Huh. Even if you make $15/hr/ft, You. Don’t. Have. Enough. Money. To. Keep. Your. Family. Healthy! But because you have a “premium” insurance, you still can’t get help, not even a partial medical package to help pay the deductible because you have “a good insurance company”.
Then, on top of that, there was a blogger from my local news paper that ended up saying no one ever dies because of the lack of health care in this country. I have a friend, whose memory will stay with me forever, is in the afterlife because of the lack of affordable and/or available health care. He was severely diabetic. He was unemployable because the nerve disorder associated with diabetes affected his eyes and his feet. But because he could see and walk to where ever, he wasn’t considered disabled to need SSD. To GET that diagnosis, he would need something from a doctor. He can’t see a doctor because he has zero money. Anyway, he was relying on the free medical clinic for the supplies he needed, especially the insulin needles. But of course they can only give out what they have. If the manufacturer nor the GP donates those, the free clinic can’t give it out.
Anyway, this same lady who thinks so highly of our medical system, says that she found free items online, and they’re all over. Well, let me see. This guy has no money. Literally. His girlfriend is a waitress, and is also 20 years his senior. (I would say she is a cougar, but I think he pursued her, so what do you call a guy who prefers older women? idk…) Anyway, she was lucky to have her mother’s house, which was paid for, so she didn’t have a mortgage… But with her low pay, it’s not like she could afford anything other than absolute necessities, and would stop by our house or meet us for breakfast for a social life. Of course even going out for eggs, toast and hash browns is relatively cheep. They had no computer. Even if they did, they struggled to keep up with paying their electric bill, and couldn’t even afford dial up. So, neither of them knew how to operate a computer. This lady had the nerve to say that I should have gotten it for them. Well, can we say HIPPA? I can’t act as a middle man.
So, his heart eventually gave out, due to the fact that he couldn’t take his insulin.
A sweet lady at church, her sister had to go for a heart valve transplant. They’re not supposed to do that unless you’re healthy enough to have it, because it’s a very expensive and tedious procedure. They open her up, and her lungs were like gauze, and had double pneumonia. They complete the surgery, and rather than keep her in to pump IV antibiotics into her, they send her home. She died like 4 days later.
Then, of course when I used to have the premium Blue Cross insurance, the doctor prescribed to me Tricor, because my triglycerides were high. Guess what? My insurance wouldn’t cover it. They wanted me to take Gemfibrozel. It’s used to lower high cholesterol as well, and the rest of it was fine with me. Thing is, I ended up with such pain and stomach aches, I couldn’t take it, and Tricor was $80+/month.
Anyway, it’s just stupid, because we have such fragmented health care it’s NOT funny! The insurance companies, and the hospital/clinic systems are run by CEO’s and attorneys. Their bottom line is the almighty dollar, while the doctors are trying to please them while treating patients. Then some of them don’t talk to their staff, and well, it’s just really stupid because your primary ought to be like the catcher of your health care. As the patient, you’re the pitcher, and you toss your medical problem to your doctor. he’s supposed to send “the ball” to what ever specialist you need, whether it’s imaging, cardiac, digestive diseases, surgery, etc. The insurance company is supposed to be the fans in the stadium, because each person is different, and has different needs. But no. The hospital suit has to grab a bat and decide that you pitched a foul ball, so here you stand at the pitchers mound, with no ball to chase to first base. It’s a sad situation.
I really think that Japan has a good system, because they will send physician assistants to schools to do the annual routine check ups. They’re so efficient, as I remember, that I don’t ever remember having to wait long lines at the office, and when I needed my breathing treatment or ear infection treated, I was seen right away.
No, I don’t want to move back, I’m a terrible Japanese. I’m too American to fit in. Plus who wants an opinionated big mouthed woman anyway, who harasses the legislature to pass laws that make sense and is fair?
Yep, and more and more worker do not have health care.
The loss of Health care is directly related to the death of Unions.
In 1978 48$ of workers were in Unions,
80$ of all Americans had health Care.
Since 1980 there has been an attack on Unions.
and as unions fell so did wages, and Health Care.
As my dad said, if we let them they will take it all back an inch at a time.
Labor IS valuable too.
I never could afford health insurance at any of my jobs, and they sure as hell weren’t going to pay for it. Their idea of a “great benefit package” meant I got to buy insurance through them at twice the cost of what I could have bought on my own.
Fun Fact: Most places that I worked for required employees to bring in a doctor’s excuse for each day that they were absent from work. Otherwise they would be written up or terminated. As if missing a day’s pay wasn’t bad enough.
Employers do not feel Labor has any value.
and Reagan’s America’s Worker don’t believe they have any value.
The reason people do not have Health Care is that employer’s believe that Workers have no value and are easily replaceable.
And the Workers believe that as well.
As a Temp worker I will tell you I am shocked by the behaviour of Young Workers that I work with.
Just to give Americans an example of a European system… Since Democrat bloggers are in love with so many European things.
Mango is disabled isn’t he; so this is what would happen here…..
Disability Allowance, €188 = 272 Dollars a week:
http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/social_welfare/social_welfare_payments/disability_and_illness/disability_allowance.html
Medical card > Free GP (family doctor) services, Prescribed drugs and medicines (with some exceptions). See section on prescription charges. In-patient public hospital services, out-patient services and medical appliances. Dental, optical and aural services…
http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/health/entitlement_to_health_services/medical_card.html
Maybe he would get this Rent Supplement:
http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/social_welfare/social_welfare_payments/supplementary_welfare_schemes/rent_supplement.html
>> In mainland Europe he would probably get even more. The Dutch, French and Nordic people can be even more generous…..
#Whisper to Mango# -> I’ll look after you if you decide to move to Ireland;).
Healthy people can and do, more work than sick people. That means that public health is valuable. Socialized Medicine is just an investment in the health of the nation. Socialized medicine is less expensive than private medicine, because of the economy of scale : buy one and you pay full price, but buy 10 million and the price per item drops way down. In this way Socialized medicine would cost us less than the current privatized system, and improve the over all health of all our citizens at the same time. And like I said before, healthy people can and do, more work than sick people. Businesses lose a lot money every year due to employees getting sick. So Socialized Medicine would be good for business, too
Invest in America. Invest in each other.
How can any person with empathy and a conscience say that there should be allowed such a thing as “the working poor”? Really? Isn’t “working” supposed to cure that “poor” problem, according to the right-wing folk? Oh yeah, it ain’t working that helps with poverty it’s the frikkin’ getting PAID part that helps with poverty.