Tula Connell is managing editor at the AFL-CIO .
Think you know how bad the nation's health care system is? Think again.
This week, the 1.5 million-member, AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America launched “In the Heart of the Health Care Hustle ,” an interactive online project to gather stories from America’s workers, and channel their outrage into action. Before the site even went public March 21, more than 200 people had posted their stories. Hundreds more have come in since then. Some describe their struggles to unravel the insurance industry’s bureaucratic red tape and still get the health care they seek. Some tell how they are forced to stay in jobs they can’t stand so they won’t lose their health care. And many, like this woman from Washington State, wonder what’s to become of us in this nation.
I just recently turned 62. I have never been sickly until lately....I have no health insurance at all and I don't have a clue as to how I am going to get all these [hospital] bills paid. I have checked in on health insurance but it is so terribly high we can't afford it....My husband will be 70 years old this year and still has to work for us to make ends meet at all. What are Americans to do?
These stories make clear the nation’s health care catastrophe isn’t just about low-income people struggling to make ends meet. The crisis has hit the heart of the middle class. More than one-third of those without health insurance—17 million of the nearly 47 million—have family incomes of $40,000 or more, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute , a nonpartisan organization. More than two-thirds of the uninsured are in households with at least one full-time worker.
The health care crisis has a multiplying effect: While those who are uninsured face loss of homes and life savings, the rest of us also pick up the bill. Families with health insurance pay premiums that are $922 higher each year to cover the health care costs of the uninsured. Taxpayers foot the bill at $21 billion a year when workers are forced to turn to government health care programs.
Worse, these experiences depict a nation bifurcated by one health care system for the haves and one for the have-nots. Writes a woman in New Mexico:
My husband recently had a heart attack and four bypass surgeries. We had no insurance. The doctor says he needs a defibulator or he is going to die. He said he would put in the cheapest defibulator he can find because we have no insurance. I told the doctor it is upsetting to know that he (my husband) wouldn't get the same care and equipment because we don't have health insurance as someone who has it. The doctor's answer to that was, "It makes a difference and a lot of places wouldn't have taken care of him at all." This was a month ago and he hasn't even set up the tests needed for my husband. This is a sad thing. My husband is 62 years old.
Page after online page, the health care heartaches are pouring in. A woman in Ohio writes she and her retired diabetic husband pay more for health insurance than they receive in income—and when they buy prescription medication, they can’t afford food. A Colorado wife wonders if she and her family should discontinue their health care coverage because paying for insurance premiums has put them $20,000 in debt. And although Terry and her husband, a couple in Texas, have health insurance coverage through their jobs, they can’t afford to insure their kids—so they drive across the border to Mexico for their care.
Working America’s Health Care Hustle has proved a powerful draw for people hungry to tell their stories—because in too many cases, they have nowhere else to turn. And until we as a nation address this crisis, Anonymous easily could speak for us all:
We will be working the rest of our lives to pay off these bills and will never achieve the "American dream."
