Share Your Story: What do preventive health services with no co-pays or deductibles mean to you?

The current provisions that cover preventive health services are important first step - but no where near enough. Currenty, I am a Family Doc and provide care for people of all ages and incomes. In the past I was underemployed and uninsured and unable to afford any health care. So, I see things from multiple perspectives. These Preventive Health  provisions will enable many of my patients to afford contraception, preventive screenings, etc. However, they are 1) for those with insurance and 2) do not cover the cost of additional care that might be needed. What is needed is publicly-funded, single-payor, universal  health care, as is available in many other civilized countries (industrialized and not). This does not mean a "Medicare for All" since Medicare pays 80% and individuals have to pay 20% (and then private insurers sneak back to rob the piggybank.) VA care-for-all would be closer since the VA provides full coverage..... It does not need to be as obscenely over-indulgent as "Chaney Care" has been but needs to be equitable and available to all.

For me preventative health care means not having to pay a copay for birth control. I hope this will mean that women would previously couldn't afford birth control now can.

I now have health insurance but not long ago I did not. I am not a frivolous young person who did not care about my health. I worked for a foreign government and my employer was not able to provide health insurance for me. I had a modest salary and it took me quite some time to save enough to be able to afford private insurance. When I did finally purchase it I went out the first day and had a routine obgyn exam. In the course of this exam it was discovered that I needed surgery. Because this happened at the onset of the policy, my new insurance company set about trying to prove that I was not covered based on a preexisting condition clause. As an individual there was no insurance available to me with no preexisting condition clause. The company sent me a series of forms to fill out requiring that I provide the name, address and phone number of every doctor, pharmacy, and health care facility I had been to in the last five years or my insurance would not cover the required procedure. This included every place I'd ever bought an aspirin, some Dramamine for a plane trip, for a headache I got in China... I complied! They requested it all again, on their forms, written by hand. I did it again. They did this ten times. After I complied every time, they told me that my policy was invalid because on one page of the many forms I filled out I had mistakenly transposed the month and day. The correspondence I received gave me the option to appeal BUT it have to be post dated by the end of the day I received the letter on! I could fax it but they wouldn't honor anything from a public fax as that would violate privacy policies. I fought with them for a year in this way, whilewaitingFTP have a growth removed from my ovary that was many times the size of my ovary. They eventually relented. Since that time I have Had to fight insurance companies again and again for basic services: while I was in labor the hospital called in a routine exam by a specialist without giving me achoice and he was out of network, though my hospital and doctor were in it. That sort of thing. In my opinion, health insurance reform could not be far reaching enough. 

I know that some people go overboard when it comes to seeing the doctor.  I also know that some doctors take great advantage of scheduling unnecessary doctor visits.  That being said, I wish to explain my views on the ability to visit them period.  I hold ill views of the medical profession because of their lack of compassion when it comes to those who cannot afford them.  My mother was forced into bringing 4 (would have been 7, 3 miscarriages) children home to impoverished Mississippi in the 60's .  We could never get well checks, dental visits unless there was pain (my teeth definitely needed care, still do).  We actually are  more than likely better off from not going in some ways.  I say that because of the views on antibiotics, the side effects of most meds and the life threatening  diseases they cause (even though they don't tell us about it).  For my own family, it would have prevented grief of another kind had their been ways and means to help unravel mental illness/drug abuse in my oldest son.  There are still unanswered questions for him, but he is an adult now.  He's an adult with no health insurance and no faith in those he has visited.  Patterns repeat themselves, and I became a deserted mother of two.  Medicaid is a JOKE.  My second son had extra teeth, and as I worked, my mom was taking him to a remote town to get help.  We eventually gave up and suffered through payments to a dentist who at least  allowed us to make payments instead of lump sum.  I say that for those who have impaired health or those who have impaired their OWN health, ease in getting checkups is a great thing.  Perhaps there should be limits of another kind.  I don't want to trade one illness for another just to keep a doctor's pocket book fat.  We  have  very little to fatten them with.    My mother had breast cancer.  I went with her to get a mammogram in 2002?  I think.  I had to, as a result get a biopsy over 7 lil "pencil point" spots on my right breast.  I was stabbed, you could say.  I hurt for ages afterward because I have such small breasts.  Then we heard that it could be that mammograms cause  breast cancer.  (This was from a nurse)  Will I be getting them in the future?  Don't want to.  There's another type that's kinder, but it costs, and the ones who conducted the first biopsy moved to that facility, so...  How are we supposed to feel?  It's bad for those employed, unemployed.  I see nothing but a big business at our expense.