Private Health Insurance at Work: Hassling Breast Cancer Patients

Saturday I told you about Deron Arnold's battle with cystic fibrosis and his insurance company. Today, another example of private health insurance not just abandoning the sick but harassing them when they need help and rest the most:

NPR's Joseph Shapiro tells us about Jamie Drzewicki, 58, of Florida. She works two jobs: activities director at a nursing home and, with her husband, musician at clubs and cruise ships. She got regular mammograms and pap smears and stayed healthy... until she got breast cancer. Then she learned that her employer-provided health policy had an annual benefits limit of $100,000. Her treatment racked up more bills than that, and she now owes the hospital $62,000.

While one office in the hospital is trying to help her apply for financial assistance, another office in the hospital has called the collection agency. While Drzewicki tries to recuperate, she gets two or three calls a night from the collection agency, saying they're going to sic the lawyers on her if she doesn't pay up. Just what you need to hear when you're trying to recover from cancer, surgery, etc.

To add insult to injury, Drzewicki had to switch jobs. When she came back from her surgery, her old boss gave her a hard time about missing work. Thanks for caring.

We still have millions of people who can't afford a health insurance policy in the first place. But even working folks who can collect the scratch to cover an insurance policy are being left high and dry by their take-the-money-and-run insurers. Shapiro cites a poll by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health that finds one in five Floridians and one in four Ohioans reporting they are being contacted by collection agencies. The number one reason for those calls: unpaid medical bills.

The problem with health care is not illegal immigrants or freeloaders. Middle-income families with two or three incomes, like the Drzewickis, are getting squeezed by the private insurance racket. Workers are playing by the rules, trying to stay healthy, and still ending up broke (and don't forget sick).

Getting sick isn't a crime or a sin. It happens to everyone... and it should bankrupt no one. The sick don't go bankrupt in France, Germany, Canada, or anywhere else in the industrialized world, at least not at the rates they do here in America.

Save money, save lives, and be a good neighbor. Support universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health coverage.

Read more: see Joseph Shapiro, "Health Bills Can Lead to Debt Woes for Insured, Too," NPR, 2008.07.20.