An Idiotic Response

Let’s say you worked at a job where you weren’t offered health insurance as a benefit, or your portion of the monthly premium was too much for you to afford, and you went to the doctor one day because of an ache in your side. You had some cash money, so you let the doctor order a scan and some other tests. He tells you that you have cancer in one of your internal organs (just choose one…it doesn’t matter). He tells you that he wants you to schedule a consult with a cancer specialist and that you’ll have to have surgery, radiation, chemo, blood transfusions, special medications for at least a year or more, follow-ups, more scans, and many, many doctor visits.
The costs associated with these things are well into the six figures, just for the next three months of treatment. Scans are $2,000 each. Each consult or office visit is $150 or more, and there are far more office visits and consults than one can count on both hands, both feet, and using all teeth. Radiation and chemo therapy are well into the four figures each time (and there are many such therapies). Surgery costs around $1,000 a minute. Transfusions, even using Red Cross blood, are four figures each. Medications cost from $1,000 to $10,000 dollars a month or more depending on what they are.
You’ve managed to save up four or five thousand dollars for health concerns. You see the potential two to five hundred thousand dollar bill. You’re an intelligent person, worked all your life, paid your taxes, and happen to have a job that doesn’t help you with health insurance (there are millions of jobs out there like this).

To which charity or charities do you go to obtain the means to pay for the services you need for your cancer?

What, you haven’t a clue? Neither do I. Yet that is the answer given by some people running for and in national and state political office regarding health care in this nation and the fact that some people are uninsured. One former office-holder even said that they could go to the emergency room and get care. Yeah, emergency rooms are equipped to handle cancer therapy…right. They’d escort you right back out where you came from, and legally, too, I might add. All emergency rooms have to do is provide life-saving treatment for an immediate life-threatening event and an exam to determine whether or not you need immediate, life-threatening treatment.
Can your church afford a half-million dollar bill? Can your family? What about the Salvation Army? Or maybe the local United Way. Probably not.
Listen to one lady as she responds, No "charitable organization" would have helped pay for my mastectomy and the unexpected additional surgery thirteen days later, three and a half days in the hospital attached to a morphine drip, my reconstructive surgery or the Tamoxifen prescription that I need to take every day for the next five years. Nor will they pay for my follow up mammograms, Oncologist appointments, or any other necessary treatment and preventative measures. I am lucky - I have a good job and am able to afford to pay for my health insurance.
I don’t know what the answer is. I do know what it isn’t. It isn’t what it currently is, and it isn’t the idiotic response given by some in public office, and running for public office. Nuff said.