Health Care: We’re All in This Together

I went into teaching not because I enjoy it—though I do—but because I needed a health plan. I was a lucky man to have skills, particularly writing, that were in demand at universities.

For years as a freelance writer, that is, working for myself, I carried only “catastrophic” coverage with a large deductible. I figured I was a pretty healthy young guy who could handle the bills that came with the ordinary maladies of the day. Also, for years, because my wife has Irish citizenship, we lived outside of the United States. We and our children were eligible for the “free” medical care that is part of life in Europe and other foreign countries, where health care is considered a human right, rather than a bidder’s delight.

But, like anyone, as I got older I worried about the big ones—cancer and heart trouble—knowing that there was no way I could ever earn enough money to bid for and pay medical bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I realized that I had to be attached to a corporation or institution to live safely in the United States.

It is interesting to me that here at home, gatherings of my generation inevitably end up with deep conversations about aches and pains and medical insurance. Sad. In France, where we lived for years, the subject never came up. People talked about food and wine.

When my wife’s life was saved by brain cancer surgery at the Institute Rothschild in Paris, I told the surgeon I would like to pay him something, as much as I could. “Monsieur,” he said, “I am a government employee and a socialist. I have never taken a franc or a dime for my work, and I don’t intend to start now.”

Read more here: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/health_care_were_all_in_this_together_20120328/?

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We are all on this spaceship together and if we don't start acting like it soon, we are all gonna go down in flames...........