A good day

Apologies to you lucky readers who don't live in the United States and who currently enjoy universal healthcare. This post is all about justice prevailing here in America.

I tried not to get all caught up in the hype yesterday morning, waiting for the Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). I posted on Facebook that it felt like watching the "Buckwheat Dead" sketch from Saturday Night Live, oh so many years ago.

And both of you know I'm not really happy with ACA anyway. Removing the public option weakened the bill considerably and left insurance companies in the mix. It's a fact that Medicare's administrative costs are 3 to 5 percent, while commercial insurance companies spend 30 percent just to process (or, more likely, deny) claims. Single-payer (Medicare for all) is the most economical, humane, just, fair way to deliver healthcare to everyone. Period.

So while I was a disappointed Democrat after ACA was signed in 2010, I'm still a devoted Democrat in 2012, and I wanted the Supreme Court decision to uphold the law.

I was surprised at how happy I was, once Wolf Blitzer got it all sorted out. (He originally reported the individual mandate had been struck down, which was not the case.) Giddy, even. My President won! A very good day! And he gave a very classy statement a couple hours later in which he pointed out who the real winners are: Me. And you, if you live in the United States.

I haven't benefitted from any of the ACA provisions yet. My insurance company (I pay through the nose for a private, high-deductible, catastrophic policy) has always offered an annual free well-woman visit to my OB-GYN, including an in-office PAP smear, and I can get a free mammogram every year, as well. Which I haven't done in a while, so I'd better schedule that soon. Those are a couple benefits from the law that some insured women now receive.

What the law didn't prevent, however, is my insurance company dropping all its individual policies. I learned this spring that as of July 1, 2013, I will no longer have health insurance. I'll be 62 at that time. It's not likely that I'll be able to find anything even close to the already expensive policy I now "enjoy." (Considering that this policy doesn't cover office visits, lab work, X-rays or diagnostic tests, and that I rarely visit a healthcare professional, Aetna has profited quite nicely from my premiums.) I've already started researching replacement policies.

Deductibles in most plans have gone from $3000/year (which is what mine is) to $5000/year. Most policies now cover office visits, with a $30 to $35 co-pay (my doctor charges $72 for an office visit for his uninsured patients). They typically offer 80/20 coverage – they pay 80 percent and the patient pays 20 percent – after the $5000 deductible has been met.

I'm grateful for my relatively good health. I'm glad I have a health savings account (which will pay for the upcoming dental work). I haven't contributed to the HSA since I originally funded it several years ago, and I still have most of it in the bank. I'd like to say my BMI is normal, but I'm beginning to believe it may never be. Obesity may be a pre-existing condition, but it's not going to keep me from being insured. Eventually.

I'm willing to go without insurance for the six months from July, 2013, to January, 2014, but my husband won't hear of it.

My hope is that West Virginia will begin setting up its insurance exchange well before the January, 2014, deadline, and that we will be able to opt into it ahead of schedule. I'll be making some calls to find out if that's being considered.

My other hope/wish/fervent prayer is that President Obama is re-elected in a landslide. Talk about a mandate. This signature legislation has helped and will help millions of Americans stay healthy or get treatment for conditions which were previously denied coverage. Once I'm eligible for the state exchange policy, I will save more than $2000 a year in premiums. And, truly, it's not all about me. It's about moving this country forward, eventually, to that ideal single-payer, Medicare-for-all system. Health reform in the United States will be a long slow process.

Yesterday's decision was a major step in the right direction.

Friday Quote Day

My hopes are not always realized,
but I always hope.
~ Ovid

Without hope, we'd never have elected Barack Obama as our President. I have to say though, right now I'm a little nervous about my hope for health insurance reform.

I guess if the public option doesn't make it to a final bill, I'll just move to scary old Great Britain, or evil old France, or – horrors! – Taiwan, fercryinoutloud, all of whom have excellent universal health coverage, as long as you're not listening to Faux News. (Next time you meet a Canadian, Brit, Aussie, Finn, Swede – you get my drift – ask them if they'd trade their health plan for what we have here in the U.S.)

But enough of that. I try to keep my political rants away from my blog. That's what Facebook is for! Heh. (Wanna friend me? djmcneer AT citynet DOT net)

Those of us working to improve our health, and particularly those of us who are doing so by trying to lose weight, have lots of hope. For a while. We're doing the right thing, following the plan, sweating to the oldies, running, walking, lifting – we're gittin' 'er done.

Except some of us aren't.

As I trudged up the first hill of my route yesterday, I happened upon a guy sitting on a bench in his front yard. We usually wave and say hi when we meet, but rarely have a conversation. I was astonished when he asked me, "Are you losing any weight?"

Of course I answered, "No," because I'm an honest kind of person. And then I said, "Maybe I'm not supposed to."

I think of my friend Nancy, who died last year at Christmastime. She and I "met" on an e-mail list for those following an Atkins diet plan. During all the years of our friendship, weight loss (and knitting) glued us together. When she got sick she lost massive amounts of weight. She looked elegant and serene and lovely. But she was ill and couldn't eat more than a bite or two of real food at a sitting. Her food had to be ground in a blender. She was nourished by a feeding tube the majority of the time, and only when she had a real hankering for the taste of something would she ask for coffee ice cream, or Jell-O, or ground-up chicken fried rice.

I keep telling myself that I used to be thin and I can get there again. Hope springs eternal, I guess. But I surely hope I don't lose weight like Nancy eventually did.

My former husband also lost massive amounts of weight during his illness, although he never really needed to do so. I'm sure you've heard the expression that the cure is worse than the disease. That, unfortunately, was his experience. (Thank you all for your kind thoughts while I was gone, by the way. I appreciate all of you so very much.)

Maybe my extra pounds are keeping me healthy. (Wouldn't that be ironic, considering that my health insurance premium is higher because I'm overweight?) Maybe I'm supposed to learn acceptance, or patience, or tolerance of my own too-large body from this challenging journey of daily exercise and healthful meals. Maybe I'm stubborn. Maybe I'm an optimist.

Maybe I'll just keep on keepin' on, and see what happens. There's that old hope thing. Again.

P.S. To contact your Senator and urge him or her to fight for the public option, go here. The drop-down menu to find your state is in the upper right-hand corner of the page. To find your Representative, go here. The contact information is in the upper left-hand corner of the page. Do it today. We can't wait any longer.

Real food for real people

So, my husband and I went to the movies yesterday. We like documentaries, and the nearest theatre which regularly features them is two hours away. Going to the movies is a day trip for us.

We saw Food, Inc., and decided on the way home we might become vegetarians. At the very least, we will seek out family farm-raised chicken, beef and pork. Turns out one of the farmers interviewed in the film is two, maybe two and a half hours from us, and sells his products to the public almost every Saturday.

So buying meat will be a day trip, as well.

At the very end of the film there were many suggestions flashed up randomly on the screen, ideas you can use to eat better. One was "Plant a garden. (Even a small one.)" My husband nudged me; he knows how much my garden means to me.

We have friends who are about as self-sustaining as you can get and not be Amish. We called them on our way home and invited ourselves to dinner. For the rest of our lives! Heh.

Interestingly, Time magazine published an article on the comeback of "real food," a response to consumers who were withdrawing from manufactured food. The article appeared October 12, 1987. Here we are, 22 years later, singing the same old song. Amazing.

It's kind of like health care reform, isn't it? Harry Truman wanted to implement an improved health care delivery system in the '40s. And here we are, 60 years later and much more deeply entrenched in the illness-for-profit game insurers love to play. In spite of my President's press conference last night, I have little hope for true reform as long as insurance companies continue to be a part of the mix. They're rushing to raise their premiums now, before reform passes.

Did anyone else notice that the phraseology was changed from "health care reform" to "health insurance reform?" That, at least, is more honest about what needs to be done. Actually, single payer is what needs to be done, but no one with any kind of power seems to be listening to us.

Some knitting news! I cast on for a sweater for me a couple days ago. The new issue of Knit Simple featured a lovely, comfortable cardigan that looked like just the kind of easy knitting I can handle right now. You can see it in the "9 to 5" preview; it's the fourth one in the row, bright red. I'm doing mine in periwinkle blue.

And I'm still walking. I refused to weigh myself this morning. If I'm walking for the sake of walking, I can't let the scale discourage me in any way whatsoever. I can't boycott it completely, but I think I'll wait until I get back from visiting my dad to check my weight again. That may or may not be a mistake.

My dad's a very good cook. Heh.

Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to Washington we go

First, on the fitness front, I took a five-mile walk yesterday, extending the route I ran Monday. Today I'll be driving all morning and walking around a big museum all afternoon. Tomorrow's walk will be short (1.1 miles from the Washington Monument to Capitol Hill) and slow.

This will be a quick trip and, I hope, a successful one.

Success would be defined by the number of participants in this march for health-care reform. We know that single-payer isn't going to happen this year, but if our numbers are significant enough, perhaps the Powers That Be will be more open to the idea.

We can't line their campaign chests with millions of dollars, as the health sector (pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, hospitals and HMOs) can.

But we vote.

Jazzed

What a weekend! I’ve been running full-tilt since Friday night, and I really don’t see how that’s going to change for the next few days.

My intentional exercise has been limited to a long walk Saturday morning to buy strawberries from our Amish neighbors. (Two gallons! My husband came along to help tote them. Oh, and to pay for them. Heh.)

But the incidental activity has been off the chart, with more to come. I worked in the garden, weeding and transplanting seedlings, for a couple hours yesterday morning. (Finally, finally, I have tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and cabbage growing outside. The green beans, spinach, radishes and flowers are all coming up great. The snow peas? I think rabbits like tender snow-pea shoots.)

Then I painted doors for nearly three hours yesterday afternoon. With more still to do.

The remainder of Saturday was spent cooking and cleaning in preparation for our Organizing for America event to discuss healthcare reform. If you’re a regular reader here, you know I support a single-payer plan. Even though that’s not going to happen this year, I feel certain we’re heading in that direction.

Our guests were like-minded. So much so that two of them will be joining us on our next trip to Washington, DC, to participate in a national rally later this month.

I guess my intentional activity for June 25 is already scheduled!

The wheels of government …

turn slowly, apparently.

This post will be completely lacking in health or fitness content, mostly because being on the road and then being exhausted – emotionally and physically – has resulted in a lack of health or fitness content in my life over the past few days. This post also is kind of lengthy and might not interest you, particularly if you live someplace other than the United States and/or are happy with the state of your health care.

So, here’s how Washington, DC, works. You and thousands of others drive and drive and drive – slowly – from all directions into a tiny little section of real estate surrounded by several outerbelt highways. You get lost a couple of times and finally find your hotel. Which, as it turns out, isn’t in a particularly nice part of town, so you have a bag of microwave popcorn for dinner.

You’ve driven in DC before, so you are willing to find a parking garage and walk to Capitol Hill the following morning. That process actually went very well. The weather was great, the city was bustling, you could feel the energy of Important People going to Important Places to do Important Things.

My husband and I counted ourselves among them. We were on a mission: We were going to convince our Senators (Rockefeller and Byrd) and our Congressman (Rahall), all Democrats, that single-payer health care is the best way to reform our system. It works in every other industrialized nation in the world. Most Americans and most physicians favor this plan.

There were 10 of us altogether. Among our group were four doctors, a former mayor, a college student, a social worker, a retired economics professor and an Australian native who is now a U.S. citizen who will be returning to Australia to have a hip replacement done. And me.

We didn’t get to meet with the politicians themselves, but spent a good deal of time with representatives of each. Congressman Rahall’s representative wasn’t very knowledgeable about the issue; we felt we were educating her. She wanted to know what AARP thought of single-payer, and I thought several of us might fall off our chairs. AARP is profiting quite nicely, thank you, from the system the way it is. If you think they are an advocate for senior citizens, think again.

Senator Rockefeller’s aide was quite emphatic that what we want is not going to happen. It is politically impossible at this time. Period. End of story. She listened to all our stories, said she would read all our resources and repeated that single-payer isn’t an option in the current debate.

Senator Byrd’s aide said the same thing, but he was much nicer about it, and he also seemed very sympathetic to the cause. Senator Byrd doesn’t sit on any of the relevant committees, as Rockefeller does, so he can’t be of as much help anyway.

What we heard from both Senators – and this is where you come in – is that they are getting more phone calls and letters from people wanting less government interference in their lives. They didn’t specifically say that these constituents were against single-payer healthcare, so we took that to mean they don’t want anyone messing with the Second Amendment to the Constitution. But the bottom line is that these Senators really do seem to listen to what people are saying. Single-payer advocates apparently aren’t as loud as those who want to keep their guns. And we definitely aren’t as loud as health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists.

If you care about the state of our nation’s health and economy, please contact your Congressional representatives and tell them what single-payer can do for America and Americans. Solving the health care problem will go a long way toward solving our economic woes. Go to PNHP for talking points. Common Dreams has an informative article written just last month about the obstacles we need to overcome. Spread the word in your blogs, in your workplaces, in your families, at your doctors’ offices. Here is a list of groups and organizations supporting HR676, which will lay the foundation for single-payer. (It’s also available as a .pdf.)

Although it has no scientific validity whatsoever, I’d love for you to answer this question at urtak, and to ask others to answer it as well.

This is not just a personal issue for me. I care about my country and the people who live in it. Millions of people are uninsured; millions more are underinsured. If you haven’t had an insurance company deny one of your claims, you will. Our systems is “working” right now by having an army of office workers in doctors’ offices fight with an army of office workers in insurance company offices. Thirty percent of our health-care dollars pay for this fight.

That money can be spent far more wisely.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end. I wish I could give you a prize! All I can give you is my heartfelt thanks for doing whatever you can do to help get this done. The political climate is oh-so-close. You could be the tipping point.

Kicking ass

Okay, back to running for a paragraph or two.

I was out of town last weekend and didn't get to run Saturday or Sunday, so I'm making it up by running every day this week. Still planning for Friday to be a rest day, although it won't be, really (more about that later).

Monday's run was on the treadmill because it was ... can you guess? ... raining! Again! My grass is so beautifully green and lush and, um, long. It wasn't a very good run, if good equals fast. It was more of a walk – three miles in 42 minutes – but at least it was miles.

Yesterday was a perfect May day and I did four miles outside. Pace was faster than last Thursday's, but still slow – 13:03/mile. I only stopped to walk about six times, which is a tremendous improvement. Progress!

Now, about Friday. I'm putting my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and joining a group of WV citizens who are meeting with Senators Rockefeller and Byrd, and Congressman Rahall. We have appointments at 9 and 11 a.m. and at 2 p.m. – a full day of lobbying for healthcare reform! I can't just sit back and not get involved. My participation so far has been peripheral – I've attended PNHP meetings, made phone calls, written letters – but I feel that the tide is turning and I will do whatever I possibly can to make it happen.

Discouraged? You betcha.

This will probably be a downer kind of post. It might wrap up on a high note, but the way I feel right now – probably not.

When I applied for private health insurance almost a year ago, I was taking an antidepressant, which increased my premium significantly. One of the side effects of it was decreased appetite, and I liked that. Another side effect was a rash, and I didn't like that at all. I stopped taking it for six weeks to let the rash clear up, and when I started it again the rash came back but it didn't affect my appetite. My husband, who is a psychiatrist, says that sometimes happens: A side effect may be present upon initial dosing, but it will clear up or go away later. I quit taking it at that time.

In order to reduce my premium, I had to document that I had been off the antidepressant for six months. My doctor insisted on seeing me in his office (which meant paying for an office visit – my insurance doesn't cover office visits), signed a letter saying that yes, I had been off the pills for six months, and I applied for a rate reduction.

Well the records which I was required to send to the insurance company included – of course – my weight. And since I'm obese, my premium had to stay the same. Didn't matter to them that I'm otherwise healthy or that I run long distances or that my lab values all fall into the perfect or better-than-perfect category (including my TSH, darn it). The only thing I can do to reduce the premium is to reduce my weight.

Well, y'all know I try. And try. AND TRY. There is something about this body of mine that just won't release weight in any significant amount, no matter how many miles I log, no matter how few calories I eat, no matter what combination of foods I ingest, no matter what.

Yesterday I got a letter from the insurance company saying that because of rising healthcare costs, new medical tests and higher drug prices, they were raising premiums for all their policyholders. My rate increase comes out to 15 percent.

I know it's a good idea to lose weight, but if or when it happens my premium will still be higher than it was when I first applied and was accepted. I suppose I should be thanking my lucky stars that I was accepted. It's the insurance company's job to deny, deny, deny – both applicants and claims.

My Senator, Jay Rockefeller, has introduced a bill that would allow early entry into Medicare for those aged 55 to 64, and would eventually enroll every child in the United States into a program called MediKids. I called his office yesterday to thank him for his forward thinking. It would be great for me if that bill passes, but I have little hope. I think introducing bills in the Senate makes individual Senators look good whether the bills pass or not.

The bottom line, though, is that we need Medicare for everyone. The 19- to 54-year-olds out there need to go to the doctor, too. The Senate Finance Committee meets this morning at 10 a.m. to discuss healthcare reform. Not a single representative for single-payer healthcare has been invited to the table. Max Baucus (D-MT) has been quoted as saying, regarding single-payer, "I'm not going to waste my time."

So yes, I'm discouraged this morning, for myself and for my country. Fixing healthcare would fix so very many economic problems in this country. I guarantee I would not hoard my insurance premium if some of it were in my pocket instead of in Aetna's.

Do you support single-payer? If so, please contact Senator Baucus at (you can call the Finance Committee office at 202-224-4515) and let him know. He's under the illusion that single-payer is not possible under the current political climate. I think it's more possible than ever. Also, contact your congressmen and women and ask them to support HR676. Do it today. Please.