For People That Don't Think We Need Healthcare Reform

This is a post I don't want to make because it's messy, complicated, leads to tangents, and makes me mad. However, this line of thought has occurred to me so many times, and caused me so much stress, that I feel compelled to record it.

I don't care what your politics are; healthcare needs to be examined and overhauled. The changes made can't come soon enough and are probably too little too late for hundreds of thousands as it is. I'm not even sure why healthcare is a matter of party allegiance. The more I see, the less sense party affiliation makes.

I assume that the point of labels like "Democrat" and "Republican" are to provide a shorthand for understanding the viewpoints of the party members. But this seems like engineered prejudice and ignorance. Shouldn't our legislators be people who weigh each issue as it appears, taking into consideration current and future ramifications? Instead, we have two (nigh indistinguishable) parties that have made up their minds on the answer before they ever hear the specific question. This doesn't strike anyone else as Totally Verkakte?

At any rate, healthcare is the general point of this post. So here's a single healthcare story for you, broken down into salient points for easy digestion:

• Exhibit A: Tax paying US citizen who has worked entire adult life. 
• Citizen takes a new job, moves across country, incurs debt for relocation and increase cost of living
• Citizen is laid off from job after 6 months
• Due to this lay off, citizen loses income and health benefits
• Four weeks before lay off, citizen is diagnosed with cancer
• Citizen manages to work with doctors and staff and gets surgery and bulk of treatment done before lay off. 
• However, this does not cover post op and follow up treatments. Medication is FOR LIFE. Adjustment and required testing to ensure proper medication and critical cancer repression can take up to ONE YEAR POST OP. 
• Citizen is eligible for COBRA continued insurance benefits, which clock in at approx $500/month.
• Citizen is not eligible for major medical coverage or other state or federal programs, because they are "eligible" for COBRA. In addition, most "relief" programs require the participant to have an uncovered period of 6 months to a year.
• Citizen's unemployment benefits cannot cover rent and the COBRA payments. This does not factor in car payments, food, debt, utilities, gasoline, etc.
• Citizen's monthly medical bills, barring a recurrence of cancer or an unforeseen medical emergency, clock in at less than the COBRA $500/month. However, if the health insurance is allowed to lapse it can have far reaching effects. Even if the citizen gets a job with health coverage in the next three months, they could fall into the category of PRE EXISTING CONDITION. This fun little clause allows an insurance company to deny payment on services rendered for up to ONE YEAR. For example, this citizen's medication and cancer screenings could still be out of pocket for up to a year. The only way to insure this doesn't happen is to have NO LAPSES IN COVERAGE.
• Citizen now faces several critical items: recovery from major illness, job hunting in depressed economy (that's RIGHT, I SAID IT, depressed depressed depression depressed), and whether to put money towards health insurance or rent and food.

Does this seem like a reasonable system to you? Everything is all fair and works out? Just like with our credit cards, we've created a world we can't afford to live in. I've worked steady jobs my whole life. I've always paid my taxes. I give to charities. And I can't even afford to keep myself alive . This didn't happen to me because I'm lazy or careless. This kind of thing is happening to Everybody. 

Wake up, America. Quit letting speculative future greed and the machinations of the economically elite crap all over you. This isn't about politics. The American Dream is more ephemeral than ever; none of us will ever know the pain of paying taxes on our millions and billions because we can't even afford our cable and cell phone bills.

The system isn't just broken. It's killing us.