THE LAST WORD
Bagdikian, Ben H.
THE LAST WORD Ben H. Bagdikian The Uncovered The plane was still two hours from San Francisco when I started trying to persuade myself that the pain in my chest was caused by the United Airlines...
...The affluent may not always have it medically easy, but they have it easier...
...It is the world of health insurance, or the lack of it...
...We had a choice because, in addition to my Kaiser plan, I was covered there through my wife's Blue Cross-Blue Shield plan at her college...
...it is unjust and inhumane...
...The side on which you find yourself changes your odds of staying alive...
...In the United States, that is mostly a matter of luck and money...
...Ben H. Bagdikian, a member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board, is the author of "The Media Monopoly," recently reissued in a revised edition by Beacon Press...
...But there is another world in which my own good luck increases my anger at its continuation—a world divided by a grim frontier: on one side, The Covered and on the other, The Uncovered...
...Between exercise days he looked for jobs that had good health plans, but he found that many companies have two-tiered hiring with lower pay and fewer benefits for new employees...
...I've always known that the United States has two kinds of medical care—one for the poor and one for the affluent...
...It was soon obvious that the problem was not carrot cake...
...My wife's insurance paid for the three months my doctor prescribed...
...He wasn't sure he could go back to his old job, which required heavy lifting...
...Why, in life-and-death health care, do so many of my fellow citizens have to be medical outcasts among The Uncovered...
...It produces noticeable strengthening of the heart...
...Matt had been a baggage-handler at the airport when he had his attack...
...Luckily for me, most of these bills are stamped, Your insurer has been sent this bill...
...It is not because "life is unfair...
...But every time I take one of my expensive pills, or wire up the sophisticated chest electrodes for my exercises, I am reminded again of the immorality of our failure to have national health insurance...
...My wife told the stewardess, "My husband is having chest pains...
...Some are workers whose employers insist that they pay part of the premium for health benefits, and who can't afford to participate...
...Other firms were hiring only part-time people who don't receive such fringe benefits as health insurance...
...Some are part-timers whose hours are deliberately kept below the level that would qualify them for such benefits as health insurance...
...Heart attack" was not yet a term we took personally...
...But some were more covered than others...
...Some are middle-class— people between jobs, free-lancers and others who work at home but cannot afford individual policies, or those who are denied coverage because of "pre-existing conditions...
...After that, I ,quickly acquired citizenship in the highly populated world of "heart patients," who (like other patients with other diseases) have their own patois—triglycerides, angioplasty—and even their own one-upmanship: A double bypass fades in status before a quadruple...
...Then there was my sudden immersion into the chem-istry-and-circuitry world of high-tech medicine...
...If it turned out to be too much for his heart, could he—at age fifty-nine—find another full-time job that would provide health coverage...
...THE LAST WORD Ben H. Bagdikian The Uncovered The plane was still two hours from San Francisco when I started trying to persuade myself that the pain in my chest was caused by the United Airlines dessert...
...This does not count people who have Medicare or Medicaid, nor is it a number that will be much affected by catastrophic health insurance for the elderly...
...The implication was which hospital would admit me...
...The ambulance crew at the airport asked which nearby hospital they should take me to...
...I am among The Covered...
...Every other developed country in the world has it, and almost all of them are nations poorer than we are...
...The thirty-seven million who are The Uncovered are unlucky in their life circumstances...
...These worlds remain and always will...
...My exercise classmates and I were there because we belonged to The Covered...
...Even if he bought an extremely expensive individual policy, it would exclude "pre-existing conditions," meaning his heart problem, which is mainly why he would need the insurance...
...After a few days in intensive care, I needed a procedure that had to be provided at another hospital...
...Many are the working poor, earning too much to qualify for Medicaid but receiving no medical benefits in their low-paying jobs...
...It is also expensive: $561 a month...
...I go to my expensive rehabilitation, and I continue to get the astronomical medical bills—$1,400 a day in intensive care, $700 a day in an ordinary hospital room, plus the fees for doctors and high-tech procedures...
...The best choice was a good hospital known for high-quality nursing care, less than a mile from our home...
...But there are thirty-seven million Americans who have no health coverage...
...At the hospital, the Kaiser card in my wallet was the visa that permitted me to cross the frontier, not only to treatment but to everything else available to those who are among The Covered...
...The airline had broken his union, and he had no job waiting for him...
...My privileged pass to the world of The Covered began early...
...I am thankful for much, including a recovering heart...
...When the unfairness is preventable, it is not unfair...
...Matt wonders what will happen if he has another heart attack between jobs or while he is working for a company that provides no health benefits...
...That particular hospital would probably have admitted me as a patient in a life-threatening emergency, but many private hospitals have their own definitions of "emergency" when it comes to patients who have no health insurance...
...The nearest hospital happened to be in the Kai-ser-Permanente hospital group I am enrolled in through my employment by the University of California...
...t From that moment, I entered several new worlds...
...After I left the hospital, my cardiologist recommended a three-month rehabilitation program—three-times-a-week exercise on treadmills and exercycles while being monitored by a cardiac nurse...
...One, of course, was the intimation of mortality, after which priorities of my private world suddenly became vivid—love and the beauty of living things...
...Charlie, whose union-negotiated health plan covered only two months, had to drop out before his rehabilitation was complete...
Vol. 52 • September 1988 • No. 9
