A Negative Experience

I was dreadfully sick for two weeks with a respiratory ailment in February that, in retrospect, I was sure was COVID-19.  Not that recovering from it makes you immune to getting it again, perhaps even worse the next time; no one knows. I  haven't felt 100% since then in any case.

I tried to get an antibody test in June from my health-care provider Kaiser to determine whether I was a survivor but a doctor called me when I requested such a test and told me after listening to my symptoms back in the winter that what I had had was "the flu" and not coronavirus because I hadn't been to China around that time and she said Kaiser didn't do antibody tests anyway, because what was the point?  My respect for Kaiser fell a long way then and I wondered what they do for the $12,000 in premiums I and my former employer pay to them each year for health care which costs me a co-pay each time I use it anyway.

But now Kaiser does do antibody testing, as I discovered earlier this month when I called to schedule an appointment for a flu shot.  So six months after I was so sick I went in for a blood draw to test for the presence of sufficient antibodies left over in my bloodstream that would mark a response to the coronavirus by my immune system.  It came back a few days later negative.

After four years of living in the dystopian chaos of Trump's corrupted America, where everybody has their own alternative facts in this formerly great country, where an American used to be able to trust a test result but now nothing is what it seems to be and we've fallen down the rabbit hole of anti-science and the politicization of everything, here's what I am left with.  I am happy to have had the test finally given to me but half a year passed by before I could wheedle the test, and the antibodies likely have diminished to an unmeasurable degree by now but at least now I know that I will never know if I had COVID-19 when I was so sick in February.  The test result also might be a false negative, because nobody in America trusts test administrations or results (or vaccines) anymore after four years under Trump, he of the falsity of "If you want a test you get a test, they're beautiful" and the idiocy of "Just inject bleach, it'll clean the lungs in a minute."

How Health Care Insurance Divides Us

Donald Trump's health care "plan" would throw 18 million people out of their health care insurance coverage if implemented, and dumb down the coverage for many other people who didn't have their health care coverage through an employer sponsored plan.  That would be a shocking step backward for this richest nation in the history of the world.

As a person who was thrown out of a plan (Blue Cross/Blue Shield) myself in 1990 when I was in law school, because I had two sickly babies at the time (one had infant asthma and the other had constant chronic ear infections), plus a wife who was using covered mental health care treatment, I can tell you from bitter personal experience how devastating it is to lose coverage when you most need it. To listen to one baby rasp and cough all night, and another cry and claw at his ears all night, because I couldn't afford costly medication for them, tore my heart up.

Thank goodness a whole generation later the nation took the step to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) to get millions more covered even if they don't have jobs or have pre-existing conditions.  But there are bitter opposing points of view also, as pithily expressed by a relative of mine who finds me an appalling liberal.  Here's his view, in his own words. 

What about us people making 20k a year paying 300 bucks a month with 12k deductibles? Haven't been to the Dr in 4 years but yet I am forced by law to buy a plan that doesn't help me or my wife. I have a college degree and 4 years experience in my field and still am not offered insurance (nor have I ever) even though I work 50 hours + a week. This is the work of the "Affordable Care Act" that your liberal prince forced through. 

My insurance used to be $120 a month with $1000 deductible. We are far from there, and my situation is much tougher than yours. Please save your tears and bleeding liberal heart rants especially since you voted for me to be placed in this situation. 

I'm actually a supporter of single payor coverage for all, along the lines of what Bernie proposes. I feel for the young man who expressed his view so eloquently in the two paragraphs above; the ACA has its significant flaws and persons in his situation demonstrate them well, but I consider it a first step to universal coverage. 

Another relative spoke up on the perniciousness of our current health care system.  In her own words in the paragraph below, she expressed support for our opposing points of view but common problem--cost of provision of care.  Why doesn't close to one hundred cents on the dollar go to providing care for the ailing?

I hear you both! Since we are finger pointing, I will point my finger at United Health. The conglomerate insurance company, which also controls many clinics in my area is a prime example of conflict of interest. their so called insurance, which is primarily catastrophic insurance as it has a $6,500 deducible in network or $13,000 out of network, and we are paying $1,200 a month for this. We are supposed to get one preventative care visit annually, but when you see the doctor, he will say, this is a treatment visit, so it isn't covered. The whole thing is a racket.

The real villains here aren't liberals or conservatives but the greedy, for profit rapacious health insurance industry, the very types that threw me out of my existing plan back when I was a student and had three babies (2 needing care) and a wife undergoing covered treatment. That isn't a bleeding heart sentiment, it happened to me and I watched my babies suffer for it as we bought the care we could at full price and did without for what we couldn't pay for.  Blue Cross/Blue Shield turned in a list of the top 20% users of the plan the prior year to the group I was covered under (a Farmers Coop) and we were all discharged from the group and our coverage lapsed immediately (and we'd just met that year's deductibles!). Bastards.  I'll never forget those months of desperation seeking treatment for my sickly babies before after graduation I caught on with the federal government, a single payor offering a multitude of excellent plans to its employees that dispensed with pre-existing conditions even back then.  

The health insurance industry, which stands between us and our health care as it pursues profits, is what divides us all.

Open Note to My Son

It's open season for federal benefits.  I'm glad we inched closer to the rest of the industrialized first-world league of nations and instituted Obamacare, deeply flawed as it is (can't wait to finally see the Repug's plan!), so our poor, unemployed, young and persons with pre-existing conditions can finally have some hope of treatment and not going bankrupt if they have the misfortune of becoming ill.

The ACA is a mishmash of portal glitches, expensive (for the rest of us) subsidies, high premiums or high co-pays, lost catastrophic plans and other frankenstein-creation problems and inequities but one thing is sure, not a single Republican hand went into implementing their very own plan from years earlier.  So don't blame them!  Their plan nowadays is apparently either go to the ER (expensive for the rest of us!) or Just Die (but don't participate in doctor-assisted euthanasia).

Back to the main point, open season for federal benefits, which runs through December 8th.  The federal health insurance plan is the gold standard in this country, single payor, the best mass plan bar none.  Obamacare could have been so easy, actually, we already have a single payer all-inclusive plan that works just fine that we could have used as a template and it's called Medicare.

So youngest son Danny, since you are (the only child of mine) still under 26, if you want to have the best health insurance in the country and be included in my plan (you woud be dropped automatically when you turn 26 but you would have I think 60 days to pick up an Obamacare plan) contact me before December 8th.  I live in your childhood house and my work number hasn't changed in 24 years and my cell number is the same as when I spoke with you the last time you called me, and I will be happy to pay the extra premiums until your exclusion from my plan.  I hope you and your brothers are well.