By Georgie Anne Geyer
I am sitting here, filled with a disbelief so profound about those of my fellow citizens who don't seem to believe that we are in the grasp of horrendous health-care and insurance problems that I could scream, were not so many others screaming!
Yet, from their responses, it would seem that many Americans still don't believe we have a deadly serious dilemma. It's the old "It-can't-happen-to-me" theme, mixed up with the ridiculous idea that government can't do anything good at all. So let me offer my own personal story.
Two years ago, out of nowhere, I came down with tongue cancer, a nasty affliction that involves a 10-hour operation which leaves you with a number of thankfully treatable problems. I think the doctors were a little disappointed with me. I had never, ever smoked -- and that's the major cause for tongue cancer (never chewed tobacco, either). I was a moderate social drinker and an avid exerciser.
This entire "surprise" came upon me like a tsunami. At any rate, I went through the ordeal of the operation and am now in recovery. The cancer, they say, is gone.
Everything was going quite well until, a year ago, my insurance company canceled me. It had obviously stayed up nights searching out a reason to rid itself of this tiresome journalist, and it found I was actually an independent contractor and not a regular employee.
The fact that I had paid for my own health insurance for 50 years under three employers seemed to interest no one. I was out on the street. And were there no government Medicare, that is where you would surely find me. Alms, anyone?
But thank God there was Medicare. My assistant and I worked ceaselessly through the tiresome paperwork that it takes a PhD in health insurance to figure out -- six months of COBRA, the government's interim insurance system, which cost roughly $464 a month, then finally, Medicare and, in my choice, AARP/United supplementary insurance.
Now I have to say that Medicare has been extremely efficient.
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