Health Insurance 101

Sometimes I feel I am surrounded by complete morons. Do you ever feel this way, or is it just me? I am an actor and a singer; however, I do not like to tell people this because it has a stigma attached to it - the stigma of being ego-driven, of actors only thinking of themselves and how they can get ahead. I dislike this viewpoint of my profession, even though I can see that a large majority of my associates fall prey to this way of thinking. The job is so competitive that you have to make yourself stand out from the masses - kind of like a politician. Like a politician, we are continuously lobbying for ourselves to get that next job. Like a politician, we talk about ourselves a lot and about what we've accomplished, to get people to like us and think we're great, so we can get that next big job. It's the same type of job. (Real Estate is also the same job, but that's for another blog.) Of course not all actors or politicians are like this. Some actors just do everything for the love of the art. Some politicians do things for the good of the people. If we are smart, we have the latter viewpoint. If we are smart, we realize that life is about so much more than just ourselves. If we are smart, we think of things based on the good of humanity, the good of our world, the benefit for all. Politically, I believe this is the way the majority of New Yorkers think. New York is a melting pot. Just walking down the street, you can see people from all ethnicities, and hear every language spoken. We are a global city. We think internationally. This is good. This is how I believe it should be.

Most actors do not have health insurance. First of all, the majority of us are never employed as an actor long enough to fulfill the required number of weeks during a year that are necessary to qualify for our Actor's Equity Association (the actor's union) medical coverage. Secondly, the majority of us, while we are not working as an actor, have odd jobs which are consistently not high paying and are primarily freelance, and cannot afford to obtain health insurance. I fall into a pocket. The cost of living in New York is high. I must work a certain number of hours and make a certain amount of money to pay my bills. Just to pay my monthly living expenses, I must make more money to survive than the cut off for low-income health insurance, but I do not make enough money to afford to purchase health insurance for myself. Anyone making the maximum monetary cut-off amount to qualify for low income health insurance here in New York would either be homeless, or be illegally inhabiting a small studio apartment with far more than the allotted legal number of residents. I have also been sick for the first time in my adult life this year. More than just a cold sick - sick. I've been regularly going to a low income walk-in health care clinic that is so busy that the staff there simply cannot keep up with everyone, and where it takes me a minimum of two months just to be seen and book an appointment with a doctor. They cannot possibly give quality care. This is why I am passionate about health insurance - because I need it. I need it badly. This is why I am so angry with what I see everyday on tv. I'm angry with the insurance companies for paying people to go to the town hall meetings and stirring things up, because they like stealing all of our money. I'm angry at the republicans, who spread lies and use fear tactics to persuade people not to support something this important for the good of all people in our country. They do not want our President to succeed. This would ruin their chances of being elected again in 2012. I recently read an article in which the journalist wrote of the speech he wished President Obama to say to the American people. Here is an excerpt from this article:

"The real debate is about what kind of country we want to live in. I ask all Americans, whatever your political leanings, whatever your profession, whatever your income, to ask yourself these fundamental questions. Do you want to live in a country where almost 50 million of your fellow Americans are without health insurance? Do you want to live in a country where 20,000 people a year die of preventable or curable illnesses because they don’t have access to adequate health care? Do you want to live in a country where 2 million people a year go bankrupt because of medical costs, where 1.5 million homes are foreclosed because people have run out of money paying for medical care, where if you lose your job you lose your health insurance, a country where you can be denied health insurance because you have a pre-existing medical condition? A country where a sudden illness can destroy your economic future, even if you have a job and health insurance?

If you find those conditions acceptable, then we need do nothing, because that’s the country you live in now. Alone in the industrialized world, America, the wealthiest nation on earth, is the only country which allows these things to happen. Our current system of health care is broken, fatally broken, and when I took the job as President, I made it my first priority to fix it. I do not, I cannot believe, that Americans want the status quo to continue." ~ written by Ed Stein. INDenver Times

The first job I ever had during my high school years was working as a secretary in the radiology department of our local hospital. I answered phones, scheduled appointments, greeted people in the waiting room, did a lot of filing of charts and x-rays, assisted when and wherever necessary. I remember one night in particular. It was a full moon, when people go crazy and emergency rooms are packed much more than usual. A woman from the nursing home down the street was wheeled into the hallway on a gurney. She had fallen and broken her hip. The ER was completely backed up with much more serious injuries due to a big car accident that had taken place, so as a matter of priority those people needed to be attended to first. The old woman was kept waiting in the hallway for over an hour, screaming, calling out to her mother to help her, writhing in pain. No one could come to her aid. It was after hearing her screams of pain for that hour that I made the decision that I could never work in the health care industry. I cannot stand to see people in pain. Now I know that the health care industry must deal with so much more than just helping people. Isn't this a shame? Doctors and nurses get into their fields because they want to help people. The insurance industry contributes to them not being able to do their jobs. People should not have to suffer. They should not have to file mountains of paperwork during these extremely difficult times in their lives. It is up to us to help ease these people's suffering.

So, to these morons who shout that these are the beginnings of us becoming a "socialist" nation, I say - BRING IT ON! Canada has an amazing health care system - maybe we should actually use our brains and borrow a great idea from another nation where things actually work! Didn't everyone see the movie "SICKO"? Let's pool our resources here to fix what is broken. Let's actually use our brains for a change for the good of our country instead of corporate greed! And another thing that boggles my mind is that the greedy republican base is primarily "Christian". I've got a newsflash for these people...Jesus would be a Democrat! Jesus would help the poor, he'd be sympathetic to those who are suffering, he would heal the sick. This entire "Health Care Debate" has NOTHING to do with actual health care - it is just the ugly part of POLITICS. The ego-driven republicans want Obama to fail so they can be re-elected. The ego-driven republicans support big business, so they are doing everything in their power to keep the status quo so these powerful insurance conglomerates and prescription drug companies can continue raping Americans when they need help the most. Seriously, what are we thinking? After the past 8 years of the Bush administration running our country into the ground - what's another billion dollars added to the deficit for the good of our own people, after spending trillions on a failed war overseas? If we're going to spend it, we might as well spend it on the good of our people here at home. We've become so lazy here, fat and lazy, living the "good" life, watching our DVR shows, playing our video games, collecting all of our toys, living in our sheltered, primarily white small towns, that we fail to educate ourselves. We are too busy with OUR lives and OUR stuff that we fail to take into account the needs of others, the needs of all people from all walks of life, no matter their ethnicity or economic status. WE FAIL. We're failing now if we allow this type of politics to continue. Health care is something that you never think about until you need it. And if we don't fix it now, it is just going to get worse. I just hope, for the good of humanity, that we do not allow our failure to succeed.