Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness sans health insurance

As I am home sick today with some kind of stomach virus, the time is ripe for this post . . .

Between the time I finished grad school in May 2003 until I "sold out to the man" and "got a real job" in January 2005, I had no health insurance and I lived on cheap foods that were not particularly nutritious. It was pretty dumb of me to not get my own insurance, but I was only twenty-four and as luck would have it I did not once really need medical attention during that time. I know plenty of horror stories of people that opted not to have health insurance for a brief period and then ended up needing serious surgery after they broke their leg in a rock climbing or skateboarding or car accident and then were in debt for pretty much forever after that. Woman of danger that I was, I liked to think I had some idea of what it felt to be without health insurance. But, I didn't.

The last few days I have been trying to research what a person with a chronic disease can do without health insurance. I am researching this on behalf of an actual person I know with a chronic disease and multiple complications, all of which are currently untreated. I am looking into medicaid, social security administered disability, and what to do if you can't qualify for either. I have learned a lot.

For instance, from the official CMS website: "Medicaid does not provide medical assistance for all poor persons. Even under the broadest provisions of the Federal statute (except for emergency services for certain persons), the Medicaid program does not provide health care services, even for very poor persons, unless they are in one of the designated eligibility groups." So what do you do if you are very poor and so sick that you can't work, but don't technically qualify for medicaid? In my current experience, it is clear that some people do nothing but wait for deliverance. Perhaps because they don't have access to the internet to do their research or because they are uneducated or even because they were taught not to ask for help for themselves, but to put others first.

I am now researching low-cost or free healthcare clinics that exist as a safety net to keep those on the margins from being lost. Many are managed completely by volunteers, which is so admirable to me. However, because they are run and staffed by volunteers they have limited hours and services. Still, this may be the best solution.

I wonder if it should be this hard, though. I expect that when the US constitution was created, health care was completely different. It was common for the sick to just die and for women not to survive childbirth with much greater frequency than today. But with the advances in medicine today there are still people that die in their homes because they either can not afford the medical care they need or because they are unaware of how to get it. So these pursue happiness and are guaranteed life and liberty in the space between the bathroom and the bedroom only until their bodies succomb to otherwise treatable conditions.

I know there are many people that know a lot more than I do about this topic, and this is just my paltry couple of cents based on only a few days of searching in between my work and life activities. Do with it what you will.