Healthcare Reform: Two Points of View

Today's topic is (well duh) the healthcare reform bill.  I'm actually watching the president give his signing speech as I type this, which, if this whole thing works out, will be a cool story to tell my grandkids someday.  I'm going to give my opinions on this as both a consumer of healthcare, and also from the position of my current occupation.

First, my own experience.  Growing up, we usually had some sort of insurance, but we were constantly underinsured or subject to the whims of an HMO.  I was sick pretty frequently as a kid, including a couple of hospital stays, so the deductibles and rejected claims added up, a lot.  I lost coverage from my parents' health insurance after my COBRA ran out, and though I will soon have the option of coverage through my current employer, the cost would be prohibitive.  The one prescription I need each month is over $70 without coverage, which when you're half of a young couple just making ends meet, is a hefty amount of money.  MrMMO, thankfully, is about as healthy as they come; he's only had 3 or 4 colds in all the time I've known him, and aside from a scare when he was a newborn, hasn't had any major health problems.  The fact that we're going to have a little less to worry about with healthcare when we have kids (especially if they have my genes) is really reassuring.  Being without insurance coverage can lead to scary situations.  About a year and a half ago I cut my hand while making dinner, and the blood was pretty substantial.  I've never had to get stitches, but that was easily the closest I'd come, and had I had insurance at the time, I probably would have taken a trip to the ER.  However, knowing the sheer cost, I (and a very worried MrMMO) took all the basic first aid steps, waited for the bleeding to stop, cleaned, bandaged, Neosporin-ed, etc., and the cut healed cleanly.  Something similar happened with MrMMO last fall, when he kneeled down to pick something up and a loose carpet staple put a gash in his knee, though he's now sporting a funky-shaped scar.  While these incidents taught me that sometimes it's better to give an injury a little time before immediately freaking out and rushing to the hospital, it's also planted a seed of worry in the back of my mind -- what if something really does happen?

My second point of view comes from my job.  I work in a pharmacy, and right now the bulk of my responsibility is at the checkout.  Because of a number of factors, my shift yesterday drove me to the point of tears by the time I got home.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the law mandates I keep this very generic and not share any specifics, so I'll just say that the man or woman who works the register at a pharmacy is likely one of the most abuse-taking members of the retail sect.  Many of those factors are things that this bill is designed to limit or eliminate altogether.  While I can understand a sick person just wanting to get through the line and get home to bed, it is not the fault of the lady at the register that your order is not ready yet -- especially if your doctor never called the prescription in to begin with, or you were out of refills and didn't know it, or your insurance rejected it, or Medicaid has crashed again, or you decided that 'your order will be ready in 30-45 minutes' means 'please come back in 15 minutes and glare at us until it's ready.'  Please do not yell at the lady behind the counter.  She is doing her very best to help you, and really does want you to feel better.  If your prescription is, in fact, ready, but your insurance has declined to cover it, or if you've been paying out of pocket and the price suddenly went up, please do not go into a 10 minute tirade directed at the lady behind the register, then slam the money down on the counter, wait for your change, and walk away in a huff.  That nice lady behind the counter (who's trying ever so hard to be nice to you even though she lost her patience 5 minutes ago) may be in the same position with a prescription herself.

Yes, that got kind of ranty.  And no, I don't hate my job; on the contrary, most days I like it quite a bit.  But to know that so many of the things that cause trouble for me could be prevented make those problems even harder to deal with.  No, this bill is not perfect, but it's a start, and that's what we need.