I’d like to take the time to personally thank the Supreme
Court of the United States for their ruling on The Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act this week. I would like to especially thank Chief Justice
John Roberts for thinking beyond partisan politics. I am glad this law was
upheld, and as an Irish-American I am especially happy that this law may come
to be one of the lasting legacies of the Kennedy family.
I want you to
know that I do not write this as someone without insurance from a “pity me”
standpoint. All of my life I have lived a relatively comfortable middle class
existence. For almost all of my life, save for just a short time between jobs in
my late twenties, I have had health insurance. Despite not graduating college
until the ripe old age of 32, all of the jobs I have held as an adult have
offered health insurance as a benefit. I
was also lucky in that the jobs I held always offered dental and vision plans,
which some people find to be the holy grail of health insurance.
I also write this
as a small miracle of modern medicine. I was born in the year of the Bicentennial.
I was lucky enough to be born to college educated parents with good health
insurance. When I was born, I had a hole in the muscle wall of my heart and an
enlarged and malformed tricuspid valve. I was fortunate enough to be born in a
city with not one, but two world class research and teaching hospitals. I had
open heart surgery twice as child, once when I was two days old and once on my
fifth birthday. At the time, this was cutting edge medicine. Pediatric
cardiology was in its infancy. My surgeon was famous for transplanting a baboon’s
heart into an adult. As I grew older, there were other medical issues. These issues
were not really life threatening, but it was determined that new experimental prescription
drugs could benefit me immensely. At the age of thirteen, my parents enrolled
me in a research study involving these experimental prescription drugs at one
of those world class hospitals. Within several months it was quite obvious I
was not a part of the control group and I was benefiting from the medicine,
and I spent the next five years giving myself daily injections with an insulin
syringe. My thirteen year old self balked at the idea of doing that, but my
adult self is grateful on a daily basis that she did. I do not believe that the
care given by such hospitals will be diminished by this law as so many who are
opposed to it argue. In that case, most of Western Europe would not have
cutting edge medical care, and that is simply not true. We know the Swedes, the
Germans, the French, and the British all do great work in medical research and
they all have laws ensuring their citizens’ healthcare.
Beyond that, the
experimental medication story has even more relevance to this topic. This
medication at the time was in the process of becoming FDA approved (hence the
research study), and was approximately a hundred dollars for one daily dose if
you were to pay out of pocket. My father
was a teacher, and my insurance at that time was provided through the school
district where he was employed. At one point, when I was fifteen years old his
contract was being renegotiated along with the insurance package. Some of the insurance
packages being reviewed by the district covered the medicine, some did not. For
a very scary few weeks we wondered aloud across the supper table if I would be
able to continue on the medicine. Luckily the school board made a decision that
benefited me. If they had not, I would not have been able to continue the
medicine. I’m grateful I did, and had I not been able to there would be
consequences that would continue to affect me on a daily basis twenty years
later. That is the advantage of having good health insurance. Everyone should
have that advantage.
I have many relatives who have benefited from
their health insurance: one has Crohn’s disease; one had a liver transplant after
working as a missionary priest in the Philippines and contracting a water-borne
illness, his sister had a bone marrow transplant after being diagnosed with an
adult form of leukemia. I have an uncle who contracted a staph infection in his
heart muscle after a visit to the dentist. He required three surgeries over the
course of several years. He pulled through, went back to work, and saw his oldest
daughter get married. One of my grandfathers died recently, but he had
excellent medical care over the last year of his life as he suffered with heart
and lung issues. My other grandfather died after seven months in ICU and
isolation. He, too, had contracted a staph infection. His came after an
abdominal aneurysm. Then there is Miracle Boy. Miracle Boy was born with cystic
fibrosis. He received great medical care as a child, and as an adult has received
a heart, a set of lungs, and a kidney as transplants. He is older than I am by
a little over a year and he has married, had a set of twins via in-vitro
fertilization, and works doing drug research to help others like him. He has
lived a life that a little over thirty years ago could not have even been
conceived of for a cystic fibrosis patient.
I would like to
point out that aside from the priest and one of my grandfathers, everyone I am
talking about was covered by a non-military government employees’ insurance plan
for at least a good portion of their medical care. These people are the
children of employees or are themselves employees of the postal service, the
railroad, the school system, and the VA. These are hard-working people,
striving to live clean and decent lives while providing for their children and
trying to leave it a better place. Many of them are highly religious and all of
them were born and bred Midwesterners. These are the type of people that
created and will continue to make up the middle class if given the chance.
Good medical care
allowed my grandfathers to be surrounded by loved ones as they died comfortably.
Insurance allowed their good medical care not to burden their families. It
allowed my mother a small inheritance when her father died. It allows my
widowed grandmother to continue to live with some measure of comfort in the
home she raised her family in because she does not have huge bills to pay for
my grandfather’s care. Such things are the salvation and continuation of the
middle class in America.
Everyone deserves
access to what I and my family have been lucky enough to have. Everyone needs
to be able to go to the doctor when necessary. Every woman needs to feel she
has access to good prenatal care. Everyone deserves to know that their sick
child can receive medical care without worrying about paying the bill. Everyone
with a preexisting condition shouldn’t have to worry losing their health
insurance. Everyone deserves to not worry when they are dying that their spouse
or children will be sacked with paying off large bills.
This law is not
perfect, nor should it be viewed as such. It is; however, a starting place. I
am sure there will be bumps along the way and loopholes to fill. For now, I am
content that it is there, and that the starting place has been established. For
the first time in a long time, I am proud of my conservative friends across the
political aisle. For the first time in long time, I feel like a brighter future
is ensured for me and for America. For this, I thank you.
