Hooray! I’m covered! (by Covered California)

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Wow. I just completed my online application for health insurance in California, and I am amazed how easy and trouble-free it was. And now I can’t believe so many Republican politicians worked so hard to deny me this. As a person who survived a potentially fatal cancer in 2009, who had surgery and a long recovery, who has fought to get the care I need and was concerned after losing my job at Salon that insurance would be too costly or unavailable, I was worried.

But Covered California is awesome. I feel so relieved. Also I feel angrier now, actually, toward the foes of the Affordable Care Act than I did while the debate was going on. When I had good medical care through Salon, the issue was important but didn’t affect my own survival. But after leaving Salon, it really came home to me personally. So now, having just this minute completed my California Care enrollment, and getting healthcare for me and my wife, which will cover our familiar UCSF Medical Center, for about $420 a month, I’m feeling like it’s a political victory that is pretty unreal. Pretty amazing.

So: Thanks, Obama. Thanks, California.

And screw you, Republican scrooges, who would rather see me go bankrupt or die of cancer than see the country join the rest of the civilized industrial world in providing all its citizens with health care!

10 comments

  • yeah, I’m sure social parasites like you that want to have no personal responsibility and live off other people’s subsidies love the abomination Obama and the socialist demonrats have turned the world’s best healthcare system into.

    Nobody owes you shit, bitch. Enjoy your false socialist paradise while it lasts.

  • Drew when the uninsured and underinsured go to an emergency room we ALL pay for it. Isn’t it better if people can get health insurance that avoids that happening as much as possible?

    • Thanks for bringing attention to this issue, Cary. I’ve gone public with the fact that my husband and I went through all our money and still had to go through bankruptcy due to medical bills (and no, not because we were irresponsible, Drew). Like a lot of people, we did all the right things (worked hard, saved money, blah blah), but still lost it all. Two questions: Why is healthcare a for-profit business and WHAT KIND OF A COUNTRY DO WE WANT TO BE?

  • Any good capitalist will tell you that no matter how good your decisions are, you cannot eliminate risk. Making good choices does not eliminate risk.

  • Cary, Thank you for sharing this. I have good insurance but totally agree. I’m in Massachusetts which has been doing very well with RomneyCare for many years … (Best thing he did for the Commonwealth, but he can’t brag about it due to the Republican ‘machine.’)
    *Drew, I feel sorry for you with your heart 2 sizes too small.

  • Cary, don’t take this the wrong way, but your case isn’t why Obamacare or any other socialized medicine is wrong. It’s wrong that I should have to pay for a smoker’s lung cancer. Or physical therapy for the guy who drank, drove, and smashed his SUV into a tree. Or the medicine for a diabetic who couldn’t put the fork down. Or the woman who has eight kids and another on the way because of the welfare benefits. It’s the people who make the stupid choices and do not deserve my money. It’s MY money, I earned it because I make good decisions, and I’ll be damned if anybody else “deserves” it.

    • I’m sorry, but I don’t get your logic. Are you saying that the uninsured are all drunk drivers, smokers, and welfare mothers working the system? That there aren’t any people with private insurance making the same “bad” choices?

      I can assure you that there many people out there who have made all the same “good” choices you did, and through no fault of their own found themselves unable to afford private health insurance. Should they be left to die because people like you don’t feel our society should help them? For that matter, should stupid and shiftless people be left to die because of their “bad” choices?

      Personally, I would have preferred that my hard-earned tax dollars had not gone to funding that pointless war in Iraq, but I didn’t have a say in the matter. Now that the ACA is law, you don’t really have a say in that matter either. That’s one of the costs of living under our form of government. I would by far have preferred to see the billions of dollars that were squandered during the Iraq war go to providing health care for all American citizens, even if that meant treating smokers with lung cancer and over-weight diabetics.

      Keep making those excellent choices. I would hate for your luck to change one day, and for you to find yourself forced to seek the kindness of strangers.

    • I live in Australia, and whilst we have our own problems, I’m glad to pay for a smoker’s lung cancer treatment. It’s only a percentage of my tax, and you know what – that smoker or that drink driver could be my friend, or an amazing person (or they might yet be an amazing perosn). At the very least, they are another citizen, who for whatever reason hasn’t got the money to pay for private cover. What’s so different in the U.S.?

    • Drew, I think you misunderstand the nature of insurance. All insurance, not just the insurance subject to the Affordable Care Act. The nature of insurance is to spread the risk of loss so the cost of a covered event is not overwhelming to the individual. Insurance is inherently socialistic in that regard.

      Think of it this way, you obtain property insurance for your house so that, in the event of, say, a fire, you do not bear the cost of replacing your home all by yourself. Where do you think the money that indemnifies you comes from? Other people who also purchased insurance pay premiums, part of which goes into a risk pool. When the risk insured against occurs, the money to pay for it comes from that pool. In essence, others have paid for your loss.

      Of course you paid premiums for that coverage. But if everyone received 100% of what they paid in premiums in benefits, the cost of insurance would be astronomical, or worse, unnecessary. In other words, you are not paying for insurance in the hope that you’ll collect. You’re paying for it in case you need to collect. You’re buying peace of mind. And that’s true whether the loss occurs because of your own negligence or not. Taking the home-owners insurance analogy a little farther, if you intentionally burn your house down, you won’t receive coverage. But if you fall asleep while smoking and the house burns down, you’re covered even if the loss occurred because of your bad habits.

      All insurance is socialistic. All the ACA does is require everyone to contribute to the risk pool. It is just an insurance program, no more or less socialistic than any other insurance program.

    • Drew, don’t take this the wrong way but you are not being completely honest. Under ACA everyone must buy insurance (even though they might not need it at this time). That’s not like they are paying for other (irresponsible) people. They are insuring themselves for a time when they will need that coverage for themselves. Even before ACA, you had no problem paying increasingly higher premiums when your insurance company gouged YOU for all the payouts THEY had to make for smoker’s lung cancers and drunk drivers’ physiotherapy. Or those who gate-crashed into emergency because they were indifferent or could not afford to buy insurance. So why this self-righteous indignation now? The difference is we all pay into the system now. So we don’t have people gate-crashing the system when they suddenly find themselves in a crisis. Besides, are you really really sure all cancers are because of smoking? And all physiotherapy is because of drunk drivers? Come on, sport, be realistic. Do the math. Give logic a chance.

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