Cliff Celebrates Medicare Eligibility - Time for Medicare For ALL

 Health Insurance – Celebration Day

Originally published in the Lowell Ledger 6.7.23

I am writing this on the first day of June. Not only is it a nice, warm day with lots of sunshine, it also happens to be the first day that my health care coverage switches over to Medicare. For a partner in a mom and pop business this is a day to celebrate. Ask anyone who is self-employed or owns a micro sized business like ours and they will tell you how awfully expensive health care coverage has become.

Let me spell it out for you. Julie, my wife and partner in our small business, was eligible for Medicare last April. Prior to that, the cost of coverage for the two of us with Priority Health was $1,428.64 a month. The sticky wicket in that equation was that we had a deductible of $9,500.00. Each. Yes, we were paying $17,143.68 a year for health coverage but if we both had something serious happen in one year, we would have to come up with an additional $19,000.00. Once she switched to Medicare, the premium for just me dropped to $796.38 a month with the $9,500.00 deductible. If you have never experienced a serious illness or other major medical incident, you might wonder, “What is the big deal?”

The big deal is that with the health insurance system we have in place, the number one cause of bankruptcy in our country is medical bills. This has been the case for years and decades. We have grown so used to fundraisers and gofundme efforts to help people fighting to stay healthy we have accepted it as normal. It is NOT normal outside the borders of our country. Pink Arrow is a wonderful thing, but people in other countries are amazed that citizens of the United States, the wealthiest country on the planet, can lose their life savings and even their homes because they got sick. This does not happen in any other developed nation and a good number of underdeveloped nations: they have some form of nationalized, single payer healthcare. The Corporate Health Care machine keeps feeding us their line of horse hockey that our system is best while Insurance company CEOs take home millions in pay and bonuses every year.

People in other countries do not face bankruptcy when they get sick.

A few years ago, I was diagnosed and successfully treated for throat cancer. When the diagnosis was delivered, two thoughts raced through my mind. The first, “Am I going to die?” was immediately followed by, “How are we going to pay for this?”. For those of you who have never walked that path, let me assure you that one-two punch of thoughts is mentally and physically devastating. Obviously, I didn’t die, but it took us five years to pay for my treatment. While still paying my medical debt off, Julie came down with a tenacious lung infection that resulted in emergency surgery that removed part of one lung. That probably would have wiped us out, but the thoracic surgeon who saved her life continued his good work by saving us financially. How? Well, our insurance company played the “out of network” card and would not pay his fee, even though he worked at the hospital Julie was in and was the only one on staff who could do what he did. He called Julie and explained that he was doing well financially and was going to forgive the $10,000.00 fee from his office for the prep, surgery, and after care. His words were something like this, “There is no reason for you to face financial ruin.”

We were very fortunate. The massive number of healthcare related bankruptcy claims filed every year are testament to the families who are not so fortunate. As I mentioned, we are so brainwashed by the Corporate messaging of our supposedly superior system, we think going broke or making massive payments for health care is “normal”. It is not. Pick a country and do a check online to see if they offer some form of nationalized healthcare. My wager is that eighty percent or more of the countries you research do not allow their citizens to go broke while health insurance companies make millions and billions in profit.

Let me continue to explain my celebratory mood today. Yesterday, if I had gotten sick – say the cancer returned or something else happened to my 64 year old meat suit, then I would be on the hook for a minimum of $9,500.00. I say “minimum” because after the deductible has been met, there are many things that the insurance company will pay only eighty percent and leave the other twenty percent for me to pay.

This is a new day. My new premium for Medicare combined with the best supplemental coverage my agent could find is now $296.64 a month. The best part is that my total out of pocket expenses for a year is $226.00. On top of that, there is no network to be in or out of. I can use any doctor that accepts Medicare. Medicare just took a very large weight off of our shoulders and helped lower the cost to our small business to boot. Not only that, but my Medicare card will provide any meds I might need at a steep discount and there are many over the counter items which will be discounted as well. My step is lighter today for sure.

Speaking of steps, my new insurance will allow me to seek Physical Therapy for an ankle injury that occurred a few years ago without having to go to my regular doctor first, pay for the visit, and then be referred. (If I recall, said ankle injury cost me a little over $6,000.00 one summer.) If my ankle bothers me, I can just dance on in to my favorite PT guy and let Matt work his magic.

For the past several years as people in my age cohort express their distrust or outright contempt for the notion of nationalized or single payer healthcare, I have queried them to see if they will be opting out of Medicare. To date, I know of not one single person doing so. On the contrary, I have heard someone vehemently opposed to “national healthcare” talk trash one minute and then the next minute explain how the surgery to correct a long standing problem was totally paid for by Medicare. Hello! The clue phone keeps ringing and you refuse to answer it.

The US could change the financial outlook for the vast majority of citizens just by making some form of Medicare available to everyone. Medicare for all is on the agenda for some of our elected officials, others are too busy filling their political war chests with donations from Big Health and Big Pharma to give it any serious consideration. As a business owner, I am not opposed to the concept of making a profit, but when the financial backs of regular citizens are broken by medical debt, it is time for a change.

Medicare for all needs to happen yesterday!

For now, I am going to bask in the sunshine of a new day in which the fear of incurring insurmountable medical debt has been reduced to almost zero. Count me in the group of people celebrating a national healthcare program that actually leaves me feeling protected. Medicare for all needs to happen.