“ Sick and Poor “ In America

     I’m slowly still winding my way back home after the holiday, so it makes blogging while driving a little complicated. I’m posting this at a rest stop in South Carolina, with no time for any sort of research.

  So, check this out from  McCamy Taylor on jiust how out of whack our health care is in America.

Mon May 30, 2011

We all know that "sick" and "poor" go hand in hand in the US of A. Some of us get sick and then land into medical debt. Illness is still the biggest cause of personal bankruptcy in this country. That's why Congress made it impossible to walk away from medical debt.

Others are so poor, they can not get necessary preventive health care, and so they develop (preventable) medical problems. Like metastatic breast cancer that started as a pea sized lump that could have been removed and treated before it spread. Families get plunged into poverty,  as a bread winner becomes too ill to work. This puts the kids at risk for preventable health problems, too.

And then, there are those who can not  afford to take advantage of the crumbs which we toss to those who are both "sick" and "poor". This diary is for them.

Real stories from the frontline, May, 2011.

"There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning."
— Warren Buffett

There’s poor. And then there’s poor. The members of the second group know what I’m talking about. You are Too Poor to be “Sick and Poor” in America, when you qualify for government funded insurance, but you only have two dollars in your pocket and the co-payments for the three asthma drugs you need will cost you thirty dollars--- make that twelve, if you take your prescription to Wall-mart, which is still ten dollars more than you have right now. Monday through Friday, a social worker can get you a voucher so you don’t have to pay that thirty dollar fee, but today is Saturday. And there is a holiday weekend coming up. Too bad the poor are not allowed to take a holiday from being poor in celebration of Memorial Day. Did I mention that the woman with only two dollars and the bad lungs is a veteran?

You are Too Poor to be “Sick and Poor” in America, when you find out your co-payment to see your doctor will now be twenty-five dollars. That extra fifteen dollars was supposed to be your gas money---your city, which is one of the largest in the state, still does not have a bus, even though it has helped pay for two stadiums. So, now you have a choice. Drive to your doctor’s clinic, but do not get seen because you can not pay your part of the bill. Or, stay at home and use the twenty-five dollars to make a payment on your $20,000 “burial” insurance policy. Too bad you live in a community property state in which your spouse will be forced to hand over that $20,000 to your creditors when you die---creditors in this case, being the credit card company which you had to use to pay for all the extras that your health insurance did not cover. You, my friend, are too poor to get buried in America.   More Here

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