This Is What Happens When You Get Cancer in America

Posted by Natasha Chart, Open Left at 8:17 AM on July 9, 2009.

Because it's just as appropriate as the first time Dave Johnson tipped me off to it ...

This is what happens when you get cancer in America:

... If you worked for a company that offered insurance, if you carried your family's insurance, next year your insurer would slap a million dollar surcharge on the company policy for carrying a leukemia patient. The company would get the bill and someone in accounting would question "what is this extra million dollars we are being billed?"

The insurance company would explain to them that the million is for you, and it is yearly, but is, ahem, "fixable." They will say "as long as she is on your insurance (wink, wink) this charge will be there. So what you have to ask yourself (more wink, wink) is whether this employee is worth a million dollar a year salary on top of what you are already paying her."

... "So in a year or so of this, you will not just be uninsurable, you will also be unemployable." ...

This is what happens when you get cancer in France:

... He was first diagnosed by our pediatrician, a private sector doctor, who sent us to the (public) specialised pediatric hospital in Paris for additional exams. We did a scan and a MRI the same day, and that brought the diagnosis we know. He was hospitalised the same day, with surgery immediately scheduled for two days later. At that point, we only had to provide our social security number.

... Meetings with the doctor in charge of his long term treatment, and with a specialised re-education hospital, were immediately set up, and chemiotherapy and physical therapy were scheduled for the next full year.

... My wife pretty much stopped working to take my son to the hospital every day (either for reeducation or treatment) - and was allocated a stipend by the government as caregiver, for a full year (equal to just under the minimum wage). Had we needed it, transport by ambulance would have been taken care of, free of charge for us (as it were, car commutes to the hospital could also be reimbursed). ...

Any questions?

- If you want to look, here's the draft text of Sen. Kennedy's HELP  Committee bill.

- Sen. Max Baucus has a lot of ties to the insurance industry, which is probably why the bill coming out of his committee sucks.

- The long-term politics of healthcare suggest that Democrats would do well to make substantial reforms that amount to more than an expansion of coverage.

- Judging by Sen. Blanche Lincoln, pressuring public officials can work.

- Taxing health benefits is losing traction.

- Why women have more healthcare worries.

Tagged as: insurance, cancer, health care reform, ted kennedy