Cold Day in Hell Arrives for Patients

[FourScore]

Cold Day in Hell Arrives for Patients
by Donna Smith

It was 2006. My husband was very sick and struggling in his post-open heart surgery months. I worked full time and then some to try to make up for his inability to work in my post cancer-treatment days, but the bills just kept pouring in. Arriving home from a 10-hour workday to find the shut-offs was followed by collection calls to our home from doctors’ offices and hospitals and providers (and the nasty collection agencies they hired) to whom our insurance had paid some -- but not all -- of our healthcare costs. Evenings were terrible. I danced between trying to stay cheerful for my husband and for his health’s sake and trying to handle the financial upheaval. And I stressed out about how to keep the power on, how to keep the gas on, and how to keep the water flowing...

SNIP

...The years during which we qualified for LEAP assistance were easier. LEAP helped take some of the strain off. The lights stayed on. The gas stayed on. LEAP helped us winterize one year and lower some of the bills so we didn’t need as much help. We only had the help when we absolutely had to have the help.

But now President Obama wants to cut LEAP. He doesn’t think it’s a priority. The pain has to be spread around, he says, as the nation’s budget woes unfold. I wonder if his daughters ever saw a shut-off notice. I hope not, but I wish he could internalize what it might feel like for them...

SNIP

...And notice I haven’t even talked about the health implications and costs of living a night or two without heat or water when you are trying to heal from surgery or recover from illness – or the costs of stress-related illnesses so well documented from heart troubles to headaches, sleep disturbance to digestive upset. Why inflict more pain, why inflict more cold, why? It sure isn’t to save money. To prove a point? That we will crush people – though it is unseemly – to show our fiscal conservatism?...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/02/16-7

[dkf]

1. I'm beginning to think my health plan rocks.

A co worker just had a quad bypass and his total bill was $50 including his drug copayment.

[RandomThoughts]

2. It is about breaking people.

That is what I have found. That is only reason for them not sending the beer and travel money that is due to me, that I can figure out.

:shrug: The error is that they think they decide those things.


Honestly that comes from an error of doctrine, some have claimed some mantles that talk about crushing people, then they use that concept as their argument even if it does not fit the teachings.

I figure be nice to the people below and above you, not into the crushing stuff, except that love crush feeling. That is always pretty awesome.

:loveya:

Steve Winwood - Higher Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqlauwX_ums