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

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%.

I find it funny that men responded on this, stating that health insurance companies don't give out helmets for riding a bike, so they shouldn't cover birth control. He claims that being born a woman is a risky choice in its own. Amenorrhea which can happen from radiation or chemotherapy, Endometriosis, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and any other women specific health problems, that birth control helps, is the fault of the woman and she should have to pay that out of pocket. I digress, personally what preventive care means to me is that more women don't have to wait until their cancer has an obvious feel to it. That the cancer could be caught years earlier, unlike my cervical cancer that had several years to mastatize. Both my grandmother and stepmother died of breast cancer, that could have been treated if caught earlier. Preventive care means a healthier population, the spread of disease will slow down significantly. Most disease is spread from people that are unaware, testing means they can be treated or aware of life-long conditions, and even be held accountable if they spread any disease. Better birth control means there won't be as many unplanned children, that the family has no means (and in some cases want) to provide for. Having less unplanned children will result in fewer kids in the foster care system, and a much better percentage of them finding homes. Among advanced countries, the United States may be one of the worst places to live when it comes to women's health care. A July 2012 study showed that 43% of women didn't see the doctor or take medicine because of costs alone; the uninsured women are at a 77% rate for the same.

At 56, sharing custody of our last child, aged 13, I have degenerative discs, limited mobility and chronic pain,  and am no longer able to work fulltime. I have a Master's degree in Education, a Bachelor's in Communications, and have worked for the common good as a teacher most of my adult life, for non-profits or Charter Schools. We were never unionized, and therefore had no protection when budget cuts hit our schools at twice the rate of standard schools. I have no insurance, no savings, and am living on unemployment and some child support. I pay all medical out of pocket, which has been cheaper than paying for insurance copays. Likewise, when I was eligible for Medi-Cal, my share of cost was $1100/mo - more than my rent. But I could not find a single doctor who would see me on Medi-Cal. Desperate, I offered to pay cash, but was told medical professionals are legally barred from accepting cash from Medi-Cal patients. So I had to let the Medi-Cal lapse in order to be seen. To be perfectly frank, I am holding on until my daughter is of age, and then, with no family or partner, I do not intend to continue. I will not be a burden on my children who are struggling themselves just to make ends meet.  I don't believe there is a place for me, or people like me, in this society any more. In "Soylent Green", the 'State' offered suicide centers for those who had no other options. And I keep waiting for the moment when America decides it has a 'new job-creation model that solves multiple problems at once...'

 I think we have not gone far enough with health coverage.  There are strange loopholes ( fabricated by insurance companies perhaps?)  My doctor told me it is time to have a routine colonoscopy. After many phone calls to different doctors and to my insurance company (which is a major one,) I learned this.  If the test reveals no problems, then my insurance company will cover the cost completely.  But if a polyp is found--even something which is benign--the cost of the entire test will revert to me.  The insurance company added this false reassurance, "we will apply that cost to your deductible."  But because health insurance costs have skyrocketed as I've grown older, I can only afford coverage with the highest deductible offered.  Therefore I would have to pay the entire cost myself because I will not reach the deductible level.  It seems as if the system is arranged to discourage people from having the test done (and of course, this is a test that people dislike.)  Do I want to gamble anywhere from $3200 to $5550 that I will get a clean bill of health?  Many of the doctors and workers in the doctors' offices to whom I've spoken did not even want to tell me how much the test would cost.  They would say they didn't know how much it costs or they would give me partial answers:  I was often told the hospital charges for the test. Only months later would a call to another doctor reveal that there are also doctor charges (and sometimes anesthesiologist charges) which add thousands more to the cost.   (And sure enough, when I called the first doctor's office again to check this out, the employee unwillingly admitted that there would be a doctor charge added to the  $3300 first quoted to me.)It seems to me that the coverage plan should not offer  an incentive to skip necessary tests. There must be some way for the insurance company  to charge the patient only for the extra time needed to handle the problem which the test reveals, while still covering in full the necessary test which reveals that problem.