It’s a work day, no time to make this pretty so I just have to get it out there.
In the early 90’s I was working at a nursing home in East Providence and helping a patient get ready to take an ambulance trip to his doctor’s office. The nurses aid who was going with him was a per diem worker there named Mary. She was an older, Rhode Island yankee with a blond beehive hairdo. I asked her to help me move the patient and she asked to be excused from that task.
She said that she was waiting to turn 65 and qualify for Medicare, but until then if she hurt her back she had no options, so she was just gambling on staying healthy a while longer and then getting a regular doctor and having some security.
Mary lost. She had a stroke and lost the ability to move or speak. She then entered our emergency system that covers you after the damage of years of neglect has ruined you. She ended up in a bed in that same nursing home. I took care of her. Her eyes were open, I don’t know how aware she was. She died after a few weeks.
This is our system now. When the Medicare buy-in was proposed I thought of all the people like Mary, working and gambling on staying healthy just long enough. I would have supported a bill that helped them. Now that’s been deemed too radical.
Mary is only one of many women I have encountered who are giving health care at low wages–effectively making affordable care possible for the rest of us– who have no health care themselves.
Why? Are some Americans just not worth it? Do we value people only by their income? Is this what we want to be?
Recurring Nightmare 
Being uninsured is the pits. I remember when I was 21 and got married for the first time. At the time we were both uninsured for health insurance, which I don’t think most colleges allow students to be uninsured anymore. But anyway, I had to get a physical in order to get a job or for some other reason. And I had go to this crappy health services place and pay out of pocket and I was sitting there waiting to be examined in this makeshift patient “space” with curtains around. And I was just sitting there crying, and the doctor came in, an Indian woman, and she basically told me to pull it together. I couldn’t find the words to explain to her how this just seemed wrong — I guess she could tell I was just being too innocent about the realities of life. “You can’t go through life like that,” were her words, I think. And I wasn’t going through life like that for the most part, but the sad state of that health care facility and my own lack of access to care and how much this exam was going to cost me, and would I have enough money, and it all just seemed so sad.
I think our society as a whole mainly tries to put out the vibe that we all have equal access to everything, but when point comes to fact, the economy values people by their income and by their reimbursability. Which is why, if we could all get on some kind insurance, there would be better equality in terms of access to care.
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