I was sorting through our hospital discharge papers when another patient’s family member leaned over. “You know you can ask the congressman for help, right? On top of the government assistance you can process there,” while pointing to a well-known healthcare assistance program in the country.
That’s when it hit me: we’re all just one hospital bill away from poverty.
We pay for health insurance, sure. And those quarterly costs? Not cheap. But I guess the cruel joke is: insurance only really helps if you’re critically ill (or dying). Cancer? Covered. Heart operation? Bill cut in half, but you’ll still be accounting for charges later. And those in-between illnesses—pneumonia that keeps you down for a week, infections that drain your savings but don’t quite kill you? Those will bankrupt you anyway, or eat through whatever emergency fund you’ve managed to build. It feels like the health system is designed for catastrophe, not care.
The congressman suggestion rattled around in my head. A patron. Someone whose graces you beg to be under, whose wealth might trickle down if you ask nicely enough—and submit the right papers and requirements, of course, or have the right backer. It’s feudalism dressed up in bureaucracy. And here’s what probably stopped me cold: we already paid for this. Our taxes should have handled this. Instead, we’re supposed to be grateful for scraps from politicians who treat healthcare like charity.
Then I remembered the news headline that dominated the year after the mid-term elections: the flood control corruption scandal that made international news. The money that could have made healthcare accessible? Someone’s probably building a vacation house abroad with it, or another luxury item to add to their mountain of wealth.
I guess beggars can’t be choosers.
But we shouldn’t have to be beggars at all.
jessa 