Health Care Insurance

It amazes me that in our country of excess, how can we not have health care for everyone?
Mother Jones' Mojo Blog:

Over the weekend, Kevin Drum had a fantastic post about why we need universal health care. Just to add to everything he said, it's utterly bizarre and twisted that a person in this country can receive government health insurance after losing all their life savings in a hurricane, but if a person who loses their job—through no fault of their own—and can't pay for chemo injections, well, tough luck. It's bizarre that Medicaid will cover those under the poverty line but not, quite frequently, those at twice the poverty threshold, or just over the cutoff, or often certain parents below the threshold.

My own personal experience with health care have shown that we are in desparate need of Universal Health care. I know people will say "Big Government...blah blah blah", but I don't know how poor people survive.

When my late husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor, we were actually lucky. He had benefits, and thanks to his union, when he retired on disability, the insurance company had to sell us insurance, same benefits. Of course it was $500 a month, but without the union contract, I'm not sure we could have insured him at any price. His chemo cost $1300 an injection. The anti nausea medicine was $25 a pill.

Even though he was disabled, and elligible for Social Security benefits, he couldn't get medicare/medicade for 6 months after he qualified for disability. That would be 1 month after his prognosis said he should have been dead.

We were also able to cash in his life insurace policy from work, so we had money to live on.

What do people do if they don't have a job that provides insurance? For years, I was self employed and had terrible, terribly expensive, benefits.

Luckily, I work for a large public school district. My benefits are excellent. But the insurance company seems to think that I should only have 5 to 10 migraines a month, because that is all the meds they will give me. I asked my pharmasist how much a month's supply would cost. $550! That's a week takehome pay for me.

One of my dreams is to leave work and write for a living. I don't think I could afford it with my health.

What do people who don't have insurance do?