Sometimes the United States is a disgusting thing. As another enrollment season begins, yet again, more health insurance companies are deciding who has the right to live and who doesn’t. I am again one of the millions of people deemed too expensive to be worthy of life.
The United States is such a backward country with mixed up and messed up priorities. The United States is lying when it says its the best country ever, it knows it, and doesn’t care.
Given medical problems I have faced since birth–through no fault of anyone and only the fault of biology and evolution–I need constant and very expensive medical procedures, checkups, and medications. (I am currently on twelve medications and have two tumors that need to be removed soon. The surgery will be simple and safe but very expensive.) Given the daily expense of my medical bills, no human could possibly afford these bills – only the messy bureaucracy that is the United States can afford it. (As a recent movie puts it: “We live in the United States of Money. Love. Art. Friendship. None of that matters.”)
Health insurance companies continue to steal money from patients, nurses, doctors, and others and continue to make record-breaking multi-million dollar profits, yet they have decided only some humans deserve to live.
They continue to find ways to break the word and the spirit of Obamacare.
More and more jobs do not provide insurance–even most professors do not have employer-provided basic insurance or insurance at all. And they are not paid enough to afford food without food stamps, starvation, and/or support from others. Insurance is too expensive for public-funded colleges and universities because our neoliberal society increasingly defunds them, defunds the future and the knowledge that has built things up. Actual budgets continue to shrink in educational institutions across the nation.
The United States. Right. Now. Today. THIS. SECOND. should begin providing free healthcare for all. Executives at insurance companies have plenty of money to live for a long time and pay their employees for a long time. Money is a mere, yet deadly, social construct.
People who need medical care, regardless of anything – fault, work, etc – should have a right to live. We should celebrate life.
But, I and millions of others received a letter early this week stating without emotion or any sense of humanity:
As of Saturday, December 31, 2016, at 11:59 pm your insurance will be canceled as we are no longer offering that service or plan.
No additional information, help, or suggestions were provided. I selected the plan I have this year because it was the only option.
What is the nation going to do?
Andrew Joseph Pegoda
Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda 