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

While at work (min wage job) a co-worker engaging in horseplay broke my little finger, I went to a Dr that morning and was told since I had no insurance he would not see me and to go to the County for my healthcare needs, I went to the county and was told that since I had a job, I made too much money for them to see me.  I have some medical training so i went to the drug store, bought a splint and some bandages, went home and set my bone myself.  It healed properly and is doing fine.   Other times I have had to surgically remove foreign objects from my body using a pocket knife, razor blade, tweezers, and suture it myself using waxed tent repair thread and a curved needle.  The bottom line, it looks like we will have to treat ourselves if we need medical care and can't afford it as no one else will.  Of course then we run the chance of infection and getting arrested for practicing medicine without a proper license.  

I am a senior citizen...have 2 degrees...went to college late in my life...began at 25...and received my Masters at 50.  never realized I might be too old to get a job...I am under-employed, underpaid...I have a condo, because of my good credit. I have no health insurance....and had ovarian cancer at the age of 39. Sometimes I struggled to buy groceries or pay bills. I had to collect early social security, because I work part-time...if I didn't I'd be homeless!When Romney came out with his "47% statement" It made me angry!!! I pay property tax, payroll tax, sales tax on food and clothes...and I probably pay more tax than he'll ever pay!  Plus, I had to have rotator cuff surgery...if I hadn't injured myself at work...I probably would have commited suicide...the insurance company denied my claim...and I hired a lawyer...didn't want to...but the system is set up that way!Discouraged! my family lives in NJ...and I live in Colorado....even my synagogue isn't much help...my counselor came to see me once and brought food and a few things...for this I was grateful. When one lives alone...it is difficult. I am tired of life...but I won't give up! But even fighting becomes miserable.I'd love someone to visit me...if u could...I'll tell u more.Mary Ellen Rubinacci

The GOP Party are becoming the political party of killing-off as many voting Americans in this nation, to meet their ideological issues of staying the majority power in charge of every non-full-Anglo-White race in our country; by GOP House and Senate obstructionists' polices and practices, that will limit the rights of millions of Americans, who they deem too poor, powerless, victims, to their actions against them. Without the preventive health care service, and all comprehensive health care programs, the millions of Americans, need, we will no doubt suffer the fate that the New Tea Party Radical Conservatives, are aiming for towards the very people they have kept down since their power took place, centuries ago in the nation of Native-Americans' stolen place/heritage. If anyone is going to continue to kill-off the defenseless, powerless, innocent and unmotivated, in America, are the GOP Party, with all their draconian laws that favor the wealthy-races here and across the globe!!

Medicine in this country has been and is being assaulted from every angle possible. Both my mother and I are state licensed nurses in good standing and what has been done to medicine by the various industries (pharmaceutical, insurance, hospitals and the AMA) is not just a disgrace, it's predatory.All of this got started many years ago when Senator Bill Frist (R-TN), Senator Sr., Bill Frist Jr. (R-TN), together with Rick Scott (Gov-FL) decided to privatize and monopolize medicine, in a Right-wing scheme that closed all hospital based nursing programs (big mistake), turned the hospital setting into a for-profit business arena, and which at one point involved all three of them in a 1.7 billion dollar scam of Medicare. My mother worked until she was 77 years old, retiring from both a (NY) state system and the federal (VA) system. She had the "Cadillac of health care packages" but after George W. Bush and his corporate cronies finished with her, she has been denied any and all of the things she worked so hard to have as a Senior (she is now 92); I now pay all of her medical expenses out of pocket. This includes a deductible, all of her medications, all doctor visits, all lab work. It's a nightmare. People don't realize it, but we are in the middle of a medical holocaust.United HealthCare sent us a letter a few years ago announcing that they were going "for-profit" when they entered the stock market as an IPO. They changed their policies so that many people have had their benefits gutted. In our particular case, if she (at 92 years old) is not dragged from her bed and seen "in a hospital setting" she is fully denied any and all benefits. Yet, because of the purchasing of the doctors and their licenses and enslaving medicine in these "Regional Hospital" schemes, we have been denied services because all hospitals are becoming "private" hospitals which means they get to cherry pick who they will and will not have for patients, and what you will and will not receive for treatment(s). Many of your treatments will be unnecessary as the doctors will be ordered to run as many tests as possible to assault your insurances (which will only drive the price of health care continually up). We are rats in a trap and they are going to squeeze every cent out of us and any insurance plan we have until we are denied any health care that counts. You need to realize that ALL doctor's practices are being bought up by  these "Regional Hospitals." This means that the doctors work for big industry and once all of the doctors have been privatized and corporatized, these profit-driven business men will be making ALL of our medical decisions; NOT THE DOCTORS; the doctors will be required to do what they told to do and will have no real voice in the process; even if what they are being told to do is criminal in our eyes. This is just another reason we need to have a Constitutional Amendment banning corporate personhood, and remove the force of the Supreme Court decision (Citizens United) which the Supreme Court (an unethical kangaroo court that serves private industry) refuses to vacate, even in the face of making a ruling that has flown in the face of two hundred years of jurisprudence (stare decisis).We need Medicare for All / Single Payer from a nationalized health care system. Privatized medicine is the scourge of the Earth, and it means nothing other than rich, greedy men using our health as an excuse to make themselves richer, to abuse us with who will and will not receive health care, and it absolutely does not mean anything better in any way. Please get involved and learn for yourselves what they have done and what they are in the process of doing that is going to result in total misery for the 99%.