How do you feel when you see a GoFundMe account setup for cancer patients?
Or anyone who is struggling to pay for any healthcare cost for that manner? I see a lot of them out there and IMO it is heartbreaking. Wouldn't be nice not to have them worry about raising funds to cover medical costs? I think we all could ease their stress and worries by paying a little more in taxes while dropping premiums and co-pays costs at the same time. Just imagine what a Single Payer system would do for so many who are struggling to survive.
Here is a link of the list for medical help.
https://www.gofundme.com/Medical-Illness-Healing/
page one of thousands.................
= new reply since forum marked as read
So far so good, the cancer seems to be in control for now but the medical bills are getting pretty deep...Good old golden years 
control at this point. Stress about money should not be placed on you or your wife at this time. This why people need to understand that it is not fair to put anyone in such a position. I know it is hard not to think about but try to at least give yourselves a break from the worries somehow. Again I wish you both all the best and keep fighting. 
my experience this past year. My husband was diagnosed with advanced stage Lymphoma. It spread to everywhere in just a week or so. There were two substantial hospital stays (around 2 weeks total), 3 surgical biopsies, many expensive PET scans and dye CTs, day surgery to implant a port, 5 1/2 months of chemo, a major surgical operation (11 hours from pre-op to post-op, 6 of them on the operating table), drugs, many doctor's visits, etc. etc. I don't even want to think back on it.
We have an employer's insurance plan, the HMO version from a large group insurer (Cigna, to be honest). Nothing all that fancy (he's a college professor). He received the best medical care one could possibly imagine, and every drug and procedure and doctoring and nursing necessary to address the cancer, at a top research and teaching hospital. And his policy paid for 100% of absolutely everything, minus $40 co-pays for each specialist visit and I think 2 or 3 $100 charges. (We stopped looking at the bills, as long as the procedures were approved—because once approved we knew we were fully covered.) We were blessed. But something like 70% of Americans have some kind of employer insurance (some worse, some better), and it's hard to convince them to give it up for something they don't know.
I truly feel for you about having to pay. The stress of cancer is enough without having to worry about the financial devastation. I would like everyone to have the insurance experience we did--with a generous network and no co-insurance. 100% of approved procedures covered. I frankly don't care if it's private or public, as long as it works. Ours did. After paying into health plans for more than 40 years and hardly ever using it, we got it back when the big one struck. Everyone should have that peace of mind. Not everyone agrees on how it should work. I believe we can improve the ACA over time (as we did with Social Security, which left out large numbers of the population when it was first passed, and which didn't have any cost-of-living increases either). I think it's realistic to achieve, if people get behind it. Not that I wouldn't appreciate a single-payer government system either--I just think it will be hard-to-impossible to re-legislate.
In the end, I think we have the same goal. I just wanted to say that not everybody's story is bad in the current system; that it's not 100% evil as some would portray it. I hope you and your wife are doing well and putting all this behind you soon!
same here, I could not agree more with everything you wrote. Great post and thank you for the reply 
Medical expenses - this is the only developed nation on the whole freakin' planet where the concept of medical bankruptcy exists.
Old Pruneface called President Kennedy a SOCIALIST in 1961 for proposing universal health care.
Operation COFFEECUP - How Reagan Worked to Stop Universal Health Coverage in 1961
In December 1961, the AMA pulled out all the stops to prevent President John F. Kennedy from proposing universal health coverage. For their effort, they recruited a TV-personality.
Write those letters now. Call your friends, and tell them to write them. If you don't, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day . . . we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don't do this, and if I don't do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free.
Sounds familiar to Tea Party crapola of today. Ironic: Corporate McPravda avoids mentioning how one has-been B-movie actor took part in the organized opposition to Medicare in the early 1960s. Here's the story, thanks to Mr. Scott E. Starr:
The Campaign Against Medicare
Monday, March 22, 2010
By Scott E. Starr
EXCERPT...
In order to maintain the illusion of spontaneity, the AMA did not announce the existence of Operation Coffeecup or publicize the Reagan recording. The record was to be used, campaign organizers cautioned, only in the groups meeting under the controlled conditions of the informal coffees. Under no circumstances, recipients of the record were warned, were they to permit commercial broadcast of the recording.
Operation Coffeecup was kept deliberately low-key and internal to the AMA, its Woman’s Auxiliary, and the trusted friends and neighbors of the Auxiliary women. Reagan’s efforts against Medicare were revealed, however, in a scoop by Drew Pearson in his Washington Merry-Go-Round column of June 17th. Pearson titled his item on Reagan, “Star vs. JFK,” and he told his readers:
Ronald Reagan of Hollywood has pitted his mellifluous voice against President Kennedy in the battle for medical aid for the elderly. As a result it looks as if the old folks would lose out. He has caused such a deluge of mail to swamp Congress that Congressmen want to postpone action on the medical bill until 1962. What they don’t know, of course, is that Ron Reagan is behind the mail; also that the American Medical Association is paying for it.
Reagan is the handsome TV star for General Electric . . . Just how this background qualifies him as an expert on medical care for the elderly remains a mystery. Nevertheless, thanks to a deal with the AMA, and the acquiescence of General Electric, Ronald may be able to outinfluence the President of the United States with Congress.24
Reagan’s recorded remarks are quite extensive, and reveal a determined and in-depth attack on the principles of Medicare (and Social Security), going well beyond opposition to King-Anderson or any other particular piece of legislation.
My name is Ronald Reagan. I have been asked to talk on the several subjects that have to do with the problems of the day. . .
Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program. . . .
But at the moment I'd like to talk about another way because this threat is with us and at the moment is more imminent. One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. . . . Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We have an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.25
And what was this frightful threat that Reagan perceived as “imminent”?
. . . Congressman Forand introduced the Forand Bill. This was the idea that all people of Social Security age should be brought under a program of compulsory health insurance. Now, this would not only be our senior citizens, this would be the dependents and those who are disabled, this would be young people if they are dependents of someone eligible for Social Security. . . .
It should be obvious that Reagan’s description of the Forand bill is a description of any Medicare-type program, not just a specific piece of legislation.26 The idea that people of “Social Security age should be brought under a program of compulsory health insurance,” just is the idea of Medicare.
CONTINUED...
http://grapesofwrathgazette.blogspot.com/2010/03/campaign-against-medicare.html
If you get a chance, the geotheology blog continues with details on Operation COFFEECUP. The American Medical Association bankrolled the "mellifluous voice" of Ol' Pruneface.
I bring this all up again because so many believe history started only yesterday. The rightwing warmongers and greedheads have been organized for a long time. They've demonized liberals like me and my political heroes as socialists and communists. The nation has devolved politically to the point where even the leaders of our own party run away from the word, "Liberal." It's past time America realizes supporting the causes of the rich helped launch the political career of America’s first presidential Reverse Robin Hood.
reply. I understand the struggles and I don't mean to make things all about myself as some here have accussed me of doing. All I know is what I have been through and I have kept my mouth shut for twenty years and decided to throw away my pride and speak out even if I take heat doing so. I wish you and your family all the best and hopefully we will have someone in office who will fight the 99%. BTW I'm old Deadhead myself started in the early 80s.......
Edit to add I meant fight FOR the 99%, been so long one gets used to them fighting against us 
