The Public Healthcare Debate

[Kätzchen]

I got home earlier and was setting up to make a post, when my phone rang and it was my night for my telephone conference with my therapist. So I'm back now, and can proceed with what I hope is helpful.

So, first, yes. I've been lucky, but lucky in a way that I had good health care growing up, due to my parents having access to health care coverage. I was born in the late 50s, so the span of my growing up years were between then and the late 70s. That was the building block of care I had for my health, growing up.

But as I went out on my own, and found myself in an artist-like career (a hairdresser), I spent the bulk of my adult life making a living as a hairdresser. Back then, you paid some sort of rent for your time to practice in a salon. You were lucky if you made enough money to buy groceries for yourself or put gas in your car so you could make it to work, to earn a living. I recall that in the beginning, I only had maybe $50/week - if that. There was no such thing as having access to health insurance. It wasn't until 20 years later, that a salon I worked in actually had any health insurance that a person could opt to buy. The problem back then is the same as it is today: Health insurance coverage costs more than what you could possibly sink into a functional policy that actually helps you to have access to services, the basic type of checkups, but if you happened to have to need more than basic healthcare, then your so-called health insurance policy demanded that you spend thousands out of your own pocket, before the health insurance company even lifted a 'hand' to help you. Sound familiar, to some of you?

So, as I went on in life, I actually ended up raising two of my own biracial sons and I just could never, even then, afford any health insurance coverage. For any of us. The answer back then was to seek medical assistance via a county health clinic. One could usually be seen on any given day, sometimes for no cost of service or if you made more money than most folks, they would render services on a sliding scale fee. That was helpful for me and my sons, back then, because I was not going to hand over half of my monthly income for a health policy that would never help us at all. Sure, it helped the health insurance company employees and executives, but health insurance offerings have mostly never been affordable or helpful, then or even now.

I don't feel lucky not having health insurance. I was incredibly lucky to live in a time where visiting a county health clinic served as a way to remain healthy, when I could never afford a health insurance policy back then or even now. IF I wanted to elect to pay into a health insurance policy sponsored by my current employer, then half of my earnings would go into the health insurance 'toilet' and not ever be used to help me see a doctor or attain any other type of health related service, unless I conveniently had a money tree growing nearby.

But, back before I could even remember life as child growing up in my very big family, I seem to remember that it was only back then, shortly after WW2 that people could even go see a doctor or have a doctor treat them for any health reason. Our family lived in a very rural part of my former home state of Idaho and back then, the only hospitals around were Catholic hospitals and Catholic nursing homes for the sick and dying or for those in need of some form of round the clock nursing care. Nursing, as a paid, skilled profession, has only been around for the last 100 years or so. If I recall correctly.

Anyway... I thought it would be useful to leave a link to an article about when Health Care Insurance came into existence. I found an article on a website sponsored by neuro-surgeons from Northern California, and after looking around at other links (to include wikipedia, or other history type links), I think the article I found seems to give one a better understanding as to how the health insurance found its footing as a business and grew into the monster industry that it is today.

To read the article, click on the title provided below:

The History of Health Insurance in the United States

[GeorgiaMa'am]

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

To read the article, click on the title provided below:

The History of Health Insurance in the United States

Thank you for the link to this useful article, Kätzchen.

My dad used to talk about living on a farm when he was growing up. They were subsistence farmers. I asked him why, once, they never believed in going to the doctor. He said that nobody could afford a doctor; when things went wrong you just had to live with them. He had a knee injury when he was a teenager - he stepped down out of a grain house with a heavy bag of grain on his shoulder, and his knee bent completely backwards. It affected him his entire life, which he lived in chronic pain.

I hate the thought of people having to go through life this way - yet, people do it all the time. I don't know what my point is here - I'm not sure I have one.