Student Guest Post

I was asked by a friend to contribute to this blog and say how I feel about health care reform/my experiences with health care. I am a junior here at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, studying Spanish Education. Especially this semester, I have had extensive dealings with health care, since I was hospitalized four times. To make quite a long story pretty short I had a liver transplant my freshman year of high school due to an autoimmune disease known as Primary Schrelosing Cholangitis. My transplant saved my life, and I’m extremely grateful to be living today because I really shouldn’t be. Throughout my journey in the quest of good health my insurance company has been pretty fantastic, I’m one of the lucky ones in this country in that I have wonderful health insurance under my father and have received the best care because of it. Well, the health insurance company was wonderful until last January when I was told by my team of doctors that I would need another liver transplant, I am one of the extremely rare cases where Primary Schrelosing Cholangitis comes back post-transplant. The moment when my family and I found this out was a very emotional one, but we persisted, knowing that another transplant would greatly extended the length of my life and also greatly improve my quality of life. When we received word that I needed a second transplant, my father called my case worker, an amazing woman who deals with the majority of my care as far as insurance is concerned, and he was told that in the contract that we had my second liver transplant would not be covered by our current plan. I’m sure you can imagine how much worse that made the situation. My family and I immediately started working on an appeal letter. The way the appeal process was explained to us was that we would write a letter to company, and it was suggested that we receive letters speaking toward my character as a person (to show that I would be a productive member of society if I receive the organ) and from my doctors/care givers to speak about how well I took care of myself. After the appeal letter was sent, we would wait and see if our case would be heard by the company, and if it was a court room like proceeding where a panel of people connected (management, employees, etc) to the insurance company would decide my fate. It did not get to this point, but these people would have been deciding whether I live or die had it gotten there. My second transplant was denied, for no reason given other than “it’s not in the contract”, for no fault of my own – doctors have reassured me that there is nothing I did that caused my PSC to return. Luckily, a number of people on the inside of the insurance company saw my case and created an internal appeal that went through, so as of now my second transplant will be covered.
I would like to see the health care system in the United States change. I wish that everybody in the nation would receive high quality health care, like that of my first liver transplant. I feel this way because it just makes sense to me to want everybody to be healthy, and I see government as being a large protection of its people. Universal health care would help to keep the nation healthy, and I see that as a government protecting its people. My parents raised me to care about my fellow person, to treat my neighbor as I would like to be treated and I see both of these values being encompassed in universal health care.
While reading through the major tenants of the recently passed health care bill in the House of Representatives it seems that a lot of them are just making insurance companies into decent companies. Now, children can’t be denied because of pre-existing conditions. The fact that our government had to step in and say that children cannot be denied health care makes me sick. How in the world could anybody tell an ailing child that they cannot get care to get better because they were born with what causes them pain? The same goes for people at any age, how would anybody be able to tell them that they can’t get care because they have a disease that they did nothing to receive? The donut hole in Medicare was made smaller, and now seniors will not have to pay as much for prescriptions. This makes sense to me, once again it seems to be a government caring for its people.