Jack of Harts

So some of you know that I used to have healthcare. I did what you are supposed to do. I went to college, I got a degree, and I got a job using that degree. Then the computer industry in my hometown hit the magic threshold of too many and everybody started laying people off. Me included. I found another job, a good job, that provided me with decent healthcare insurance. It got too expensive for my employer to support though, so they got out of the middleman position and simply gave me a raise that would give me the money it took to pay for a new plan. I looked at dozens of plans from several providers until I picked the one I liked and would work for me. It was 100 bucks a month.

Then our benevolent government decided the plan I had wasn’t good enough and Obamacare was born. I lost that insurance, and couldn’t afford the 300+ dollar insurance the government-mandated insurance costed. So I did without, until last year when my appendix exploded on me. I tried to get insurance after that, but the government wouldn’t allow me to simply start getting insurance in the middle of the year. Heaven forbid someone want to do that. So I had to wait until this year to get it. And when I was finally allowed to do it, there was only one company left in my area, and they only had three plans. The 300+ plan with an insane deductible, a 700+ plan with a more rational deductible, and something north of a thousand dollars a month. For one healthy person.

I picked the 700+ option, and then went to my local clinic to check some things out. It seems I have some issues that need working on, with sleep apnea being one big one. So now I have a cpap machine. But I had to reach the 2,000+ dollar deductible before the insurance would kick in. And even after it kicks in, it still refuses to pay for a lot of stuff, and sluffs it off to me.

What’s the end result? I still owe over 5,000 dollars for the loan I took to pay for last year’s medical crap, and that was after thirty thousand dollars of charity from the Mayo Clinic to just write off most of the bill. And now another 4,000 dollars is being added to that this year that Obamacare won’t cover.

I’m closer to bankruptcy right now than I’ve been in twenty years. And back then, I did it to myself as a stupid college student who’d just learned the joys of credit cards with no limits. I recovered from that, I paid them off, and in the years since I bought multiple vehicles, and had clawed my up to the American dream by buying a house and a vacation house in lake country. I’m down to one vehicle, and I’ve sold my vacation house to keep up with the bills. And I still don’t have enough money to pay for Obamacare, or the bills it racks up on me.

So I’m forced now to go back to the Mayo Clinic again, hat in hand, and ask for charity once more. I shouldn’t have to do that. I should be able to pay my bills. But Obamacare makes that impossible. It is driving me to the edge of bankruptcy, and I hate that. The government shouldn’t be in the position of forcing its own citizens into bankruptcy to pay for programs that the government mandates we have.

But that is life under Obamacare. That is how it dehumanizes those of us caught under its thumb. And that is why Obamacare must end.