Good point. I personally believe that it is time for a reaffirmation of the 9th and 10th Amendments.

Abigail:

Thanks for being open with us. It was good for me to hear from somebody else who is in “the same boat.” It’s hard, and yes, it’s quite frustrating indeed. You and I differ on the idea of a revamped healthcare system (yeah, you tried to “sneak” nationalized healthcare past us…hehehe). However, I agree with you entirely on the basis that the system is corrupt and broken down. I think we just have different ideas on how to get it working again. But as always, thanks for chiming in. Your honesty and openness is always a breath of fresh air on this blog, even if you do hang with the Liberal Dems…hehe.

Austin:

Thanks buddy. Once again, this blog eagerly awaits your first article. You have one of the keenest minds among our readers (as often witnessed in the forums), and we’d be honored to have you write a feature piece. No pressure though.

Andy:

You are my arch nemesis and the Chairman of the Liberal front here at ‘The Quill.’ Let me say again, that while I did have a fond appreciation for “W,” I do not think highly of a great deal of his spending initiatives. He was NOT a FISCAL conservative. I like a lot of what he did, but his spending was out of control. I give him some flexibility and breathing room based on the fact that so much of his spending came as a follow-up to 9/11 and in Afghanistan/Iraq.

I do agree with you about a 3rd party. How does the Thirsty Quill Party sound?

Once again, well said.

I think the whole situation calls for different solutions that address the root causes of the economic crisis. Certainly fraud and corruption played a great part in all of this, as did willful ignorance and in some cases, greed, on the part of the American consumer. Still, there are many for whom those aren’t the factors that led to their financial ruin.

Several years ago, a Harvard study demonstrated that the leading cause of bankruptcy (particularly among those who were middle-class, home-owning, college-educated, health insured folks) was overwhelming medical debt.

In the last year, my husband and I have had financial trials similar to yours–most of them due to health-related burdens. I’ve had a series of problems that caused us to spend more in medical expenses, and forced us to look for previously unnecessary child care for the kids. We’ve done battle with our insurance company, and been surprised when we received bills for procedures we thought we’d already paid for in other bills. Almost every bill was written in what can only be described as Sanskrit, and many of them required me spending time navigating a maze of medical receptionists, billing offices, and several layers of our insurance company to determine what we were being asked to pay and why.

Not many working and dual-income families have time to spend navigating these systems like I did, hanging out on the phone with Aetna for an hour only to find out they had billed you for something your insurance supposedly covers. Billing errors are rampant, and many of our bills have been wrong-to the tune of hundreds of dollars sometimes.

I even fought the charges on a well-child visit once because I took my son to the doctor a week after his first birthday. We were billed for the whole cost, even though that visit is covered by our insurance. Apparently, it created a near-collapse of their billing system for the insurance representative to force the system to see that visit as our “annual” well-child checkup.

I have a Master’s Degree, much of which was earned studying Health Policy, and it was still complicated to discern our bills and to reconcile the inaccuracies therein. I cannot imagine Joe Six Pack taking hours out of his work day to fight the good fight for fair billing, or even sensible billing, when talking to a medical representative who’s speaking some bizarre insider insurance dialect, all the while earning enough to pay for the medical expenses he or his family has incurred. Many people like us begin their “I fell behind…” stories with a health-related incident.

Until we address the issue of the cost and complexity of our health care system, we will continue to see people slip into poverty (be it by incurring their own medically-related debt, or by the over-burdening of the tax payer through continued corporate bailout programs). Many Americans like you and me have their bootstraps forcibly cut by medical calamity. Those people don’t just need a band aid bailout, they need an entire health system transplant.

In the last few years, I have felt like a serf in some large kingdom rather than a voice in a representative democracy.