An Ugly Truth about Health Care
In August 2004, Delbert Davis lost his job and with it his health care. It happens to millions of Americans every year.
But as the Austin American-Statesman described, Davis had the bad luck to get sick before finding another job. He had cirrhosis.
He quickly ran up $200,000 in medical bills and declared bankruptcy. Expected to live only a year, he couldn't get on the list for a liver transplant without health insurance.
Davis fell right through our safety net. Medicare wouldn't cover him for two years, and he didn't have two years. He wasn't poor enough for the county health program. He couldn't afford the premium for the state program, and anyway it would make him wait a year for the surgery.
With a little more time, he might have been helped by a special Medicaid program (which would have required him to get divorced, by the way). But he didn't have time. Davis died on October 20.
His widow, Ann Davis, is left with $1,875 a month in medical bills and is afraid she will lose her house. She told the Austin paper, "My husband and I have worked hard all of our lives. We had insurance up to a very brief window of time: three months that we didn't have coverage, and this happened. Just that little lapse of time . . . and we were trapped in a spiral that we couldn't get out of."
Hard to believe that losing a job can be a death sentence, but that's how messed up our health care system is.
James:
Thanks for the heads up. However, another problem for people who need organ transplants is that there are not enough organ donors. Even if you have enough funds to pay for the transplant, it does not guarantee that you can get one.
Even so, our current system, which virtually guarantees that you will be bankrupted by any serious illness or injury (even with health insurance) does need to be changed.
Satellite Sky Blog
Find the Truth. Do Justice.
November 15, 2006 7:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Terri ~ Las Vegas
My family knows just what it is like to be very close to running out of health insurance for our baby. Elizabeth Warren has written about Matthew on this blog. It is a kind of fear that I can't describe.
Matthew was born two months premature w/ a very rare, four fold heart defect. He has other health issues, also. By the time he was 10 months old, he had two open heart surgeries at Stanford and 1.9 million had been paid ~ his lifetime cap is 2 million.
I know a family of five in Las Vegas w/ a cardiac baby ~ they have run out of insurance for the second time.
Having a medically fragile baby without health insurance is like a death sentence.
Here in Nevada, we were being told to move out of state to another state that offers a high risk pool or a state that takes care of their children. We were told to divorce so that I could be a poor single mother, then Matthew would qualify for medical care thru NV Medicaid. We were told to give Matthew up to the state or give guardianship to another family member, in hopes that they could insure him. We were told to "embrace bad credit" and "just file for medical bankruptcy" for the rest of our lives, and that we could not have any unprotected assets.
I am still in shock that this could happen to an average, middle class tax paying family that did everything right.
We have no debt other than the mortgage on our home.
Here is the link to the local news station that ran our story all day last Thursday, if you're interested. KVBC did a wonderful job letting people know that they are not safe. http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=5658416&nav=menu107_2_8
My husband is a Gulf War Veteran and Las Vegas police officer.
I find it sickening that an illegal alien, a deadbeat or a poor person will get better healthcare for their baby than my baby without health insurance. There is a lot wrong here! Our government is steering people like Mike and I to be poor.
I want to know why Stanford was paid between $14,500 to $21,400 a day for a bed and it was $1600 a day here in Las Vegas.
I understand the national average is $2000 a day. I thank God that the doctors and nurses saved his life, but they absolutely killed our insurance. Where does that leave us in Nevada??
Thank God for us, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Board of Trustees voted to raise the lifetime cap for it's members to 5 million, as of November 1st.
But what about all the other families that are going thru the same thing? What if we run out again? Matthew will need heart surgeries and maintenance for the rest of his life.
What can be done??? I know I have written to everyone you can imagine. Of course, I have heard back from a only a couple people.
November 16, 2006 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: His widow, Ann Davis, is left with $1,875 a month in medical bills
How does that work? As far as I know debts are not inherited and are wiped clean once probate distributes the deceased's assets to the creditors. The only exception would be in cases where a survivor co-signed a loan or was co-signatory on a credit account.
November 18, 2006 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Debts incurred during a marriage which are deemed necessities are considered joint debts of the marriage. Therefore both parties are responsible for them. According to the story, only the husband filed bankruptcy. I suspect that the wife has assets which are not exempt and it would have been worse for her to join him in bankruptcy.
The moral of the story is: be careful who you marry. If you marry someone who ends up with medical problems, it is very possible that you will go broke, too.
Satellite Sky Blog
Find the Truth. Do Justice.
November 19, 2006 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink