I just read a post on a blog that I enjoy reading, called "People Do Things". I really respect the author and enjoy her writings immensely.But she recently came to a conclusion I disagree with. Recently, her best friend from High School committed suicide. The author blames the high cost of anti-depressants and doctors, and ultimately a lack of universal health care for her friend's death.
In my experience, that's not how it's been. Ryan and I have had a six figure income, and a no-figure income (like right now!). There were several months during our high income days that we purposely chose not to have health insurance. And now that we have no money, we have excellent health insurance provided by the state of Maine.
But that is our choice. Universal health care would not be a choice, it would be forced upon us. You see, in Massachusetts, YOU HAVE TO BUY HEALTHCARE THAT IS GOVERNMENT APPROVED WHETHER YOU WANT TO OR NOT. I thought we would move to Boston and automatically get free health care. Nope. If you make more than poverty (but still middle class) you have to buy insurance. Not the kind you want, not the kind you need, but the kind the govt. of Mass. thinks you need.
That is frustrating.
And what's with the business of expensive depression medication? Most anti-depressants are cheap, as in $4 a month cheap. Once my depression meds were $125 a month. My options were a) to pay it, because $125 a month is a small price for LIVING; or b) get a different kind of medicine. There are always other options when it comes to anti-depressants.
But say you need a medicine that IS expensive. Like a thousand bucks a pop. There are still options. That happened to a 32 year old friend of mine right here in Maine. Guess what? The government paid for it. And I'm okay with that! I'm okay with the government stepping in when people apply for the aid.
But to force all of us? No way. It makes me think of Canada's health care system. Some Canadians who have money don't do their own system. They come here! It doesn't strike me as the best system. It strikes me as a system that works (like ours), but a non-ideal system without options. And I want options. I have seen both my children in extreme situations, where they have come within an hour of death (Ethan's dehydration), and I wasn't turned away for lack of insurance.
To cold, callous me, it seems like the blog author's friend committed suicide because she didn't have anyone around to show her her options.
I don't know what the answer is, but it's got to lie somewhere in the middle.
2 comments:
Well said.
Hi this isn’t Mom its Dad replying to your comments about health care. They reminded me of the following incident...
"For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone".
Psalms 91:11-12
About one year into serving my mission in the Eastern States, I received a letter form my mother. The letter contained bad news. My father was shoveling snow on our steep driveway and had fallen and broken his hip. The letters from home from that point on were never good. My father was in tremendous pain. He had undergone a major operation where they pieced his hip back together and it was held in place with a metal plate and screws.
The recovery wasn’t going well the pain got worse and was nearly unbearable according to the letters I would receive from mother. More bad news came. The hip wasn’t healing and had actually gotten a very serious infection. The infection was the source of much additional pain. The infection became so bad, that the doctors re-opened his hip and flushed the wound and treated it with topical antibiotics.
Once the infection was finally under control, he was fitted through additional surgery with an artificial hip. This took several months. However these several months were pain filled months. My father was very familiar with pain as he had experienced it many times in his life. From the time he was around five years old and suffered from a burst appendix to the runaway hay wagon that crashed and injured him severely at around 12 years old. At nineteen he was in a car accident. His injuries brought him to the precipice of death. He lay unconscious for days and was in a full body cast for months. Pain was his unwanted companion for much of his life.
After some time, the letters from home changed in tone. My father was finally healing and could actually walk again on his new artificial hip with the aid of crutches. Things must have been returning to normal as I no longer received letters updating me on my father’s condition. No news is good news and every week that I did not through letters, learn anew of my father’s pains was a good week for me.
Then I got another letter from home. He finally was well enough to return to work and it must have been a joy to him to get back to a normal routine in life. In this latest letter, my mother told me that my father had left the house to go somewhere. However, he was going to be picked up in front of our Sunset home by one of his friends who would drive him to where they were going.
Because of the steep grade there were five steps on the sidewalk that led from the front yard down to the main curb and sidewalk. As my father was descending the five steps down to the curb to wait for his friend, he lost his balance and fell. It seemed as if it just wasn’t meant to be that his life would return again to normal. As my father fell, his limited mobility caused by his crutches and artificial hip, meant there was no way he could brace his fall against the hard concrete corners of the steps. So down he went, helpless against the grasping hands of pain that would once again pull him down against the cold hard sidewalk and humble even more the man who more than anyone can know was humbled time and time again in his life by pains cruel clutches.
However, this time is was not to be. My father said that as he was about to hit the ground a different set of hands reached out and took hold of him. They were hands of gentleness and warmth. These hands picked him out of mid air and gently set him down on the sidewalk next to the curb. You see; he gave his angles charge over my father, and as the Psalmist said, kept him in all his ways. And they bore him up in their hands, lest he dashed his foot against a stone.
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