I'm a Fan, and I Don't Care Who Knows.

I didn't like being bald, but I was. Maybe it was because I was a girl. Maybe it was because it was really cold that winter when my hair fell out and, with it, the last bit of pretense that this wasn't happening to me. Bald or not, I had cancer. And, thank God, I had insurance. Two months prior to my diagnosis, I did not.
In my mind, people really didn't have to have insurance in their thirties. What were the odds I would be in a serious car accident? Prior to having insurance, I worked and lived in the same town. I barely drove anywhere. And I liked to think that, if my house caught fire, I would be able-bodied enough to hot-foot it out of there ahead of the flames.
Who am I kidding? I didn't think about that at all. I didn't think about any of it, because, come on, I was in my thirties and, I thought, ridiculously healthy.
But then, the lump. But then, the surgery. But then, the news that I never believed I would hear.
I had no history of breast cancer in my family. I had never smoked. I had never taken birth control. And I was 35. Thank God for the insurance, because, in case you hadn't heard, cancer is expensive. What if, though, my husband's company changes insurance carriers? Then my cancer becomes a pre-existing condition, and I won’t qualify for cancer coverage under the new carrier. Period.
So when I first started hearing rumblings of what is known around these parts as "Obamacare" I was equal parts intrigued and apprehensive. I was apprehensive because I truly didn’t believe that anyone was going to reform our healthcare system anytime soon. I was intrigued because somebody wanted to. I was cynical because I believed that this “reform” was going to be lobbyist-driven. So I did what any skeptical person should do (oh, but that they would). I read it. I read the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It’s a dry read, make no mistake. And it’s a long read. And I’d be lying if I said I absorbed every single word. It doesn’t matter. Nothing is perfect, but this is a big step toward repairing what once seemed an irretrievably broken system. Under the Act, cancer will no longer be a pre-existing condition for me if my insurance carrier changes. I will not lose my cancer coverage.
Although I have to wait until 2014, that’s better than waiting until hell freezes over. As with anything, there are pros and cons in the Affordable Care Act, but that’s another debate for another day. The point is that countless people with pre-existing conditions (not just cancer, but diabetes, heart disease, even asthma) won’t have to come up with the money to pay medical bills related to those illnesses. Don’t get me wrong, they’ll still get hammered with co-pays and deductibles, plus the percentage of coverage that falls to them, but THEY WILL STILL HAVE COVERAGE.
That’s huge. I haven’t tallied my total expenses from my cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments, but I started to. And I stopped once they hit $100,000. To think that I only ended up with 20 percent of that is a huge relief, even as the bills keep flooding in, almost two years after treatment. There is follow-up care, you see. There are regular check-ups, there are tests, there are all sorts of reasons that cancer and I still meet, long after the remission clock started ticking last year. We’re going to be linked for the rest of my life. Although my hair came back and the baldness is just a memory now, I still have post-chemo curls. I still have the scars from the surgeries, and from the port. I still write the checks to keep up with the debt, and I still have the bill collectors calling me when I can’t.
There are plenty of reasons to be bitter about cancer. So things like this so-called “Obamacare” are what I grasp at instead – reasons to be happy. They’re small victories, but ultimately I hope to be here when the war against insurance is won. I didn’t like being bald, but I was. And it’s a good thing, too, because it expanded my awareness to problems that big insurance didn’t want politicians to see.
I’m glad one refused to close his eyes.