A Spork in the Road

Let’s talk about legality.

So I’m still investigating the details of this matter, but let’s look at how things are laid out right now.

Because I went to a massage therapist off and on last year… and because the massage therapist mentioned I might want to see my doctor if the swelling by my collarbone didn’t go down… and because the swelling DID go down and I figured that was that…

My health insurance company dropped me entirely when I needed insurance the most.

Is this legal? Possibly.

But then, depending on whom you ask and how you ask it, so was walling prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. (”Walling,” in case you’re not in the know with government torture terminology, is what officials in the Bush administration called the procedure of ramming a prisoner’s head into a wall during interrogation. It earned at least one ranking Guantanamo Bay officer a commendation after he cracked a prisoner’s jaw open and documented the results with photographs.)

Ironically, if I had been less attentive to my health over the past couple of years — if I had not bothered with yoga classes or massage therapists or the like — I might be in a different situation with insurance. Of course, everyone is telling me that health insurance companies do whatever they can to deny coverage, so I suppose none of this should have come as any surprise.

No matter how things pan out with my personal crusade against United Healthcare’s “Golden Rule” (cue hollow laughter), I want people to look at the mess that is our healthcare system and stop accepting the appalling state of affairs.

I thank all that is holy and good in the universe that this nation elected a man who would look at torture and condemn it as corrosive to the character of the country.

I have high hopes that the torture chamber that is our health care system will be similarly overhauled.

Last year I signed up for health insurance.

I had just turned thirty, and mortality was on my mind. I had never had any health problems, I come from a healthy family, and I had figured it was just easier to run under the radar. When I turned thirty, I thought it was time to get some emergency health insurance, “just in case.”

Overwhelmed by the labyrinth of healthcare options, and intimidated by horror stories of evil insurance companies, I started to sign up for a plan on eHealthInsurance. I got partway through the application and stopped. A company representative called me; I started again. I stopped again. He kept calling. He suggested United Health Care’s “Golden Rule” plan; it had a high deductible, but a lower monthly payment, and our family doctor accepted it.

Fine.

I finally got everything set up and — voila! — I was covered. Whew! What a hassles, but worth it. I scheduled a physical for the end of September, when I was home from Italy and the insurance coverage had kicked in to cover the visit.

Then I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s.

Everyone told me how lucky I was that I’d gotten health insurance before discovering this. I was dazed with relief. A quarter of a million dollars in six months, on top of lost wages, would’ve been overwhelming if I weren’t insured.

Then the insurance company launched a “routine investigation” into my case. The investigation continued. Finally, months after my diagnosis, when chemo was starting to kick my butt and I was not at my brightest, alertest, or strongest, I got a letter.

“Golden Rule” was ruling my cancer a “pre-existing condition,” and moreover if they knew that I’d gone to a massage therapist for back tension over the previous year, they’d never have covered me in the first place. So they were dropping me. I was free to contact them if I had questions.

Really?

REALLY?

For a while this blow paralyzed me. But you know what? There’s a fabulous story about a kid named David who went up against a giant he wasn’t supposed to be able to beat. Within minutes, he was lofting Goliath’s gory head by its hair.

I know which character I plan to be.

My blood counts are down today from last week. Neutrophils are hovering at the bottom of “normal” range, but my overall counts were down to 2.4 (marked simply with a “C” in the margin of my blood work sheet: “C” for “Critical”).

Neulasta works. It also retails around $7,000 per shot. An Everest of a number when you’re battling insurance woes and staring at a box full of past due medical bills.

We’re going to see if my counts climb back up a little next week. Otherwise we need to talk about Neulasta. In the meantime I wash my hands, avoid crowds, sleep more.

Loss grew as you did, without your consent; your losses mounted beside you like earthworm castings. No willpower could prevent someone’s dying. And no willpower could restore someone dead, breathe life into that frame and set it going again in the room with you to meet your eyes. That was the fact of it. The strongest men and women who had ever lived had presumably tried to resist their own deaths, and now they were dead. It was on this fact that all the stirring biographies coincided, concurred, and culminated.

Time itself bent you and cracked you on its wheel.

- Annie Dillard, An American Childhood