REALITY?: Reality

I don’t blog very much, if at all, about current events. The war in Iraq, the Americans killed in the effort, the unspeakable cruelties human beings heap upon each other, the poor, the hungry, the sick and the dying. I care. I can’t help them, and would if I could. I am not cold-hearted or even apathetic. It is just that my mental energy and compassion has always been focused much closer to home, and maybe I just don’t have enough left in me to spread too much further out; to reach across oceans.

One of my dearest friends is most likely going to die from cancer soon. This outrages me because her death will be determined by her decision on how much they are willing to spend on what may be a useless cause. Her out-of-pocket medical expenses to date, with chemotherapy and radiation treatments are just over the $50,000 mark. Yes, that’s $50,000, with only one three-day emergency hospital stay, one round of chemotherapy, and one long, one short round of radiation treatments when the cancer had spread. Because her husband is self-employed, and she worked in a small company without insurance benefits, they paid $800 a month for private insurance coverage. Yet the insurance will cover $1,500 out of a $3,500 single treatment of chemo, and will not cover whatever they can get away with. This couple has worked all their lives to provide a modest living for themselves, their two daughters, their own home, and were planning their retirement in a few years. But their savings is slowly shrinking, and she refuses to leave her husband with bills that their middle class honesty will ensure being paid in full.

Further, she had to work as long as she could, despite going down in weight to 95 lbs. from 115 and losing all energy and appetite to maintain, just to qualify for workmen’s compensation benefits. These benefits do not pay until she has been out of work for five months. Unemployment will not cover the five months because, naturally, in her condition she would not be considered eligible to work. Obviously, if they were rich people they could afford top quality insurance, or to pay the medical expenses themselves. Conversely, if they were poor, all would be covered by Medicaid. Unfortunately, they are typical of the hard working, tax-paying middle class American.

So forgive me if I do not seem to care about what’s happening on the other side of the world. Or if it’s right to work six months and collect six months, or not work at all and have seven kids to feed and be willing to let others pay your bills. I can’t join the battle if a guy wants to marry another guy, and I can’t waste time figuring out which politicians are lying, because most likely they all are. The wealthy Republicans take care of themselves, and the wealthy Democrats love the poor as tax deductions. I’m sorry if I am un-American by not caring enough about every single one of my fellow men, but I also don’t go around bad-mouthing America and its leaders because I am unwilling to apply for their positions and do a better job myself. I have seen too many of the elderly cutting their pills in half, taking daily medications every other day, refusing or being refused treatment. I have seen a young man refused insurance coverage that he pays premiums on because a breast biopsy on a male is not considered life threatening because it is rarely cancer. I have watched my friend bear her pain to get an extra couple hours out of painkillers, and turn down alternate methods of care because a potentially helpful but speculative medication costs $50 a pill. I have heard loving couples discussing divorce so that they wouldn’t lose their home to medical bills. I have seen first hand how expensive it is to stay alive if you are neither rich nor poor. Now I have nothing against the rich, they have attained their position and they are welcome to it, and their tax dollars provide the overwhelming majority of relief for those who cannot afford it and must be dependent upon aid.

My friends, as many like them, are not people looking for handouts, nor would they accept any. They are reluctantly in the position of having to seek out early benefits for which they willingly paid through insurance premiums, payroll social security taxes, property taxes, and even income taxes on interest gained on those savings that are being used up now for medical expenses. Their tax dollars helped many, many others achieve sustenance, housing, and education as well as medicaid benefits.

So yes, I feel grief, and yes, it is tainted by anger over social injustice. But I can’t help the world. I have a few injustices of a more personal nature to try to compensate for first.