Obamacare saved my life
More than twenty million previously uninsured Americans have insurance through Obamacare. Last Tuesday, more than twenty million Americans with Obamacare insurance freaked out. Freaked out bad!
I admit to being one of them. On Wednesday, just one day after the election, I ran to my dermatologist to have him look at a mole....without an appointment.
I was nervous I was going to lose my insurance...that week. I've calmed down a little and now have a real appointment in about two weeks, but I doubt I'm the only one to do something like that. My guess is there are a lot of worried and desperate people out there. A few years ago, that was me.
Go back to 2012. I was between jobs and my health insurance had lapsed. I wasn't feeling quite right and was working with two doctors at a clinic. It was going well and we were making progress until my neurologist had a stroke. They referred me to Stroger Hospital. OY! It's run by Cook County. OY! Back to square one! OY!
Starting from scratch on medical issues is frustrating. Making appointments and meeting new doctors/specialists is even more frustrating. Two months here....three months there...six months for a follow-up. More than a year to get a diagnosis. More than a year of living with a chronic disease that went untreated. Parkinson's Disease.
The best thing that happened in this process was a case manager told me about the Affordable Care Act more commonly known as Obamacare. She walked me through the application process and within a month I was one of those twenty million people formerly without insurance. I went from dealing with the bureaucracy of a county run hospital to having my choice of primary physicians, specialists and hospitals. Not to mention that because of my financial situation, the costs were and still are amazing. I realize this isn't the case for a lot of people who have seen their insurance costs go through the roof but I blame the insurance companies for taking advantage of this situation as much as the law itself.
Which brings us to February of 2015. I find a mole on my upper back. After blowing it off for a month, I ask my primary physician to check it out. One look and he sent me to a dermatologist. The dermy does a biopsy and sent me to visit a surgeon. The surgeon sets a date to remove the mole. The time frame for all of this was less than one month. If I had to go through that process at Stroger, we could have been looking at close to a year....same as it was for my Parkinson's Disease diagnosis.
The mole turned out to be malignant....Melanoma. I may be overstating the Obamacare life saving thing but maybe not. Who knows how fast a stage one malignancy would have spread in one year. Much better to have it taken care of in a month, right? Plus, I can only imagine what the monthly follow-ups would have been like at Stroger.
And that's why I was one of those millions of folks freaking out on Wednesday.
But I think it's going to be okay. Future President Trump said he won't have people dying in the street. Right? RIGHT?! OY...I'm starting to freak out again. Good thing I can get Valium under Obamacare....until January.
Here's the story of my Melanoma surgery that was possible because of the ACA. Thanks Obama. MIC DROP!