Is Health Insurance A Right? Hoo Boy

JeanieSpokane (RE: Is health insurance a right? ): Is health insurance a right??? Hoo boy. As an individual with a catastrophic chronic inherited kidney disease, and the ensuing kidney failure, double nephrectomy, six years of dialysis, and the epitome of ugly diagnoses - that of End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) - I can’t even come close to asking if health insurance is a right. ESRD is excluded from any insurance coverage. I will always have it even after a transplant. End Stage. Insurance companies just laugh at me. I live on social security income alone. I have property which keeps me ineligible for Medicaid. I can’t work because being on dialysis is a full time job and a daily “iffy” experience. Every one in my unit (up to 60 patients a week) have to deal with all the excitement of collapsed veins, clogged ports, crashing blood pressure. Insurance won’t cover us unless we were lucky enough to have it in place before dialysis. More below.

There is much irony here - if you have a job and have insurance and need dialysis - it’s yours for the taking! Insurance companies will pay $12,000 a week for three treatments here in the state of Washington. If you have no insurance, Medicare will pay $250 a treatment. Thank God for Medicare because I sure don’t have $750 a week to fork out for life-sustaining dialysis treatments. Also - if you have insurance, you are able to get a transplant with no problem, other than being on the wait list for 3-5 years. If you have no insurance (or state insurance), you can be on top of the list until hell freezes over because you cannot afford to pay for the post-transplant drugs. Oh, don’t even get me started on the “right” to have insurance. Maybe doctors, medical offices, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies should all reduce their costs about 900%.

Question: So you think you have problems?