[cacophony]

i have my own anecdotal argument to share because it's easy to just talk about the poor (which i'm guilty of). but the reality is it's a crisis for all income levels at this point and we can't just sit in our comfortable middle class houses and dismiss the problem so easily.

i have a friend who lost her father this spring. he suffered a stroke the day before thanksgiving which resulted in a coma, a persistent vegetative state. he wasn't dead, he wasn't alive. he ended up in the hospital on life support through christmas because the doctors had to wait to see what would happen as the swelling went down. the prognosis wasn't good, but until they had time to see how the situation developed, they couldn't just immediately discharge him to hospice or predict any kind of recovery. eventually the hospital discharged him and recommended hospice. he wasn't improving but he wasn't worsening, and he needed a ventilator and a feeding tube.

then in january they received terrible news. their private health insurance was dropping them because they felt he'd exceeded his lifetime allowance of coverage. then the news got worse. as a retiree he also had coverage through medicare, but medicare felt his situation was beyond their scope so they denied coverage, too.

the respirator alone cost $900 per day. my friend's mother was faced with an agonizing decision. pull the plug on her husband of 35 years because she couldn't afford to keep him alive, or sell their home of 20 years to pay for his medical care. a callous person would say pull the plug. i challenge that callous person to do so if they're ever unfortunate enough to find themselves in this painful situation.

ultimately she was able to scrape together the money to cover his expenses, while lawyers (which she also had to pay for out of pocket) took the private insurance company and medicare to court. ultimately, though, he didn't make it. in april he suffered a series of heart attacks and passed away. and the fight with insurance and medicare is still unresolved.

now, let me be clear about their financial situation. my friend's father worked as an engineer in telecommunications (mostly verizon, since before it was verizon) for his entire career. your classic member of the baby boomer generation, he joined up with his company in his late 20s and stuck with it all the way through retirement. he made very good money and retired quite comfortably with benefits that included a comprehensive health care plan that he had paid into for decades. his wife is a realtor who makes a fine living selling homes in the NYC area. they own a good sized home in queens, NY, and put three kids through college. this is a family that lived quite comfortably and if not for the way circumstances worked out he and his wife would have lived out their golden years with the financial freedom and comfort that those of our generation dream about.

but one afternoon in november he had a stroke, and two months later his soon-to-be widow contemplated selling their family home to pay for the medical care he needed during his darkest hour.

now. is she "stupid" for not leveraging her awesome power as a consumer and finding a company that would cover her husband? what were her options? did she deserve to suffer the stress of the currently available healthcare systems as she experienced the agony of watching her husband die?

this isn't a crisis for the poor. it's a crisis for every one of us. if you think you're financially stable enough to not worry about healthcare, you're dead wrong. this is becoming more and more common, as the cost of healthcare rises and insurance carriers include more and more exception clauses in their coverage. when you deny the idea of universal healthcare, you approve of a world where the situations like the one described above are possible.



and to tie it back to the original discussion, he might have eaten a high trans-fat diet for all any of you know. maybe he ate too much sodium. maybe he ate too much red meat. maybe he smoked. maybe he made lifestyle choices that led to his stroke. maybe he didn't. but what if he had? did my friend's family deserve to suffer in the end, because he may have made lifestyle choices? if i told you he'd eaten a lifetime of fatty foods and smoked, would you shrug and say, "oh well, he should have lived better." what if i said he was a slim, fit man of 65 who jogged daily and ate healthy foods his whole life? would that make the situation more tragic? when we debate the merit of lifestyle choices and what people "deserve" as a result of those choices, we delve into dangerous territory.