But when it comes to individuals’ health, the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Here are two Mainers’ struggles.
—Jeff Inglis
MY LIFE ON MEDICAID
I never could have imagined what I would have to go through to get healthcare. That was before I got sick and needed help. Before I went on Medicaid.
For the past eight years I have had public health insurance in the form of Medicaid (or MaineCare as it is called here). Some people are surprised to learn I have MaineCare because they assume government-funded healthcare is for poor people — and they don’t think of me, necessarily, as poor. What’s closer to the truth is that I have Medicaid because I simply cannot afford regular insurance. The monthly premiums are just too high for me.
I first got into the system when I was 24 years old, living in Manhattan, trying to make it as a writer and an actress. One night, I found a tumor in one of my breasts. I didn’t have health insurance, and I found that if I wanted to buy into a plan, my premiums would have been off the charts because I had a “pre-existing condition,” a medical problem I knew about before seeking insurance. Before my doctor suggested Medicaid, it had never occurred to me.
I spent months trying to get Medicaid. I had to arrive in person at a dingy office in which I was the only white person in the waiting room and one of the only people who spoke English. I had to show ID. I had to come back with rent receipts and bank statements and my Social Security card and copies of my utility bills. I had to fill out pages upon pages of paperwork. And then I needed to go back to explain why I needed Medicaid.
For me this was a lot of work. But what if I had a terminal disease? Would I have had the strength to go back time and time again? What if I was uneducated, or had children, or an hourly job that just barely paid for food for my family? What if I didn’t believe my country should take care of me? Would I have lost my desire for care, or the ability to insist on getting it? Would it just have been too much?
I waited for three months to be approved by the New York City system, but by then, my doctor had decided to treat me for free — at no cost even to the government, because she couldn’t justify paying her assistant to navigate the paperwork for the tiny reimbursement she would get for my $10,000 surgery and years of follow-up visits. I’m not an invalid by any stretch, but my follow-up care is crucial. I’ve had some serious health problems that need regular monitoring and treatment to be sure they don’t get any worse, which, in that worst-case scenario, would doom me to years of more extensive procedures, which would have to be on the public dime, because nobody can afford actual medical expenses these days.
