I work for the University of Michigan; more specifically I work in the Cancer Center. I have a fancy title, and have carved myself a decent career. I have great benefits, a decent steady paycheck every two weeks. It keeps clothes on my back, food in my belly, and a roof over my head. I didn’t go to college, and I am fortunate that I have learned needed skills as opposed to wasting my adult life taking low rent pointless jobs.

Everything I have described above would have most people stabbing their mothers in the heart to get. There’s a caveat though. To enjoy this position I have to take part in a corrupt broken system. You see the job I do isn’t advocating for the patients, though my boss would try to say otherwise, my job is to advocate for the hospital at all costs.

The way our current insurance system works is that people are only allowed to go to certain hospitals to receive care. If you were to actually take charge in your healthcare and go to a hospital that isn’t contracted with your insurance you will more than likely find yourself without coverage. This is the system we have in America. My job is to contact doctors and patients, and tell them whether or not a person can come to the hospital for care. We don’t turn people away, not ever, but we tell them how much they will have to pay is their private insurance decides they should’ve gone to a different institution.

Make no mistake about it folks. You are being lied to from the word go. You are not in control of your health care, and you never were. It’s a fallacy perpetuated by private insurance firms who are deathly afraid that people will eventually wake up and see that they’re being used to cushion a bottom line. Every aspect of your healthcare is decided by a faceless administrator whose goal is to take as much money in as possible without spending a dime. You can appeal this decision, but it is unlikely to do any good. They have been doing this for years, and they are good at what they do. So good that they have struck fear into people who think the government will step in and take away their decision making, while they themselves have already committed what can best be described as criminal.

As our government falls into bickering amongst themselves regarding the concept health care reform, I see what is happening everyday to those who are lost in the system. And make no mistake about it, these people are dying. While our lawmakers are infighting over a woman’s legal right to control her own body, people are dying due to lack of coverage. Sometimes while they have insurance, yes it is true. Everything you have been told is “lunatic fringe” is the truth. From people being underinsured, to having their claims denied because they have what is classified as a pre-existing condition. Healthcare should be treated as a human right, not a privilege.

I am reminded of a patient recently. She is homeless, and would go to a nearby shelter when she could. She has breast cancer, she is going to die. The people at the shelter actually purchased her private insurance. They dipped into their own pockets and did this for someone who will never be able to return this kindness. The shelter wanted her to come to the U of M. I worked personally on this one, writing a desperate letter to her insurance carrier pleading for them to allow her to come to the U of M.

The insurance company denied her. Said she couldn’t come to the U of M because we were out of network.

I for some reason had it in my mind that the U of M, with its slogan of having the Michigan Difference, and its claim of putting patients and families first would take the patient and absorb the cost. Something I have seen done many times before.
We told her she couldn’t come here. She wouldn’t be able to afford the visit, and her insurance denied her coverage. It was a decision completely devoid of any sort of humanity. This is the price of the system we have in America. If you work in it you understand that it can, and will eat away at you from the inside out.

This is our corrupt system. She couldn’t afford to pay for health care, so she had to go without. When someone finally did the right thing, the insurance company itself micromanaged her. The insurance company made the decision with regard to her health. The best care is saved for those who are able to afford it.

I see this everyday. I see people who have never missed a payment, have tried to be healthy their entire lives, who are suddenly struck down and find that when they need their insurance the most that they’re beholden to decisions made without any consultation with them.

As someone who works in healthcare I can tell you that we are in desperate need for true healthcare reform in the form of single payer universal healthcare.

I have heard the argument that to give universal health care would be to have big government. I am going to point out something here that most people don’t seem to realize. We already have big government. We have always had big government. Our constitution was set up to have big government. Big government is not something to be afraid of. No matter how big it gets, government is always going to be beholden to the people so long as they exert their will on it. In fact the past eight years we have seen government grow to insanely large proportions.

If we already have big government, wouldn’t it be best to make it work for the people instead of the corporations? Here’s something I want you to think about, if we don’t have big government we have big corporation. I’m going to let you in on a secret, big corporation doesn’t give one care about what you think about anything. You don’t get to vote in big corporation, only big government. I wonder which one America would prefer…