If you ever need to borrow a strawberry stemmer, instant popsicle maker or human-shaped spatula, I’ve got them and about 50 other high-grade kitchen gadgets. This is not because of a strange fetish, but one of many fortunate by-products owed to one of my longest and dearest friendships.
The source of this culinary bounty is a woman I met when she was in college at the University of Denver and I was still high school, and our friendship has endured and grown through the decades and divergent paths that have followed – including her most recent professional incarnation as a sales rep for a high-end kitchen-ware distributor, which brought her – samples in hand – to Durango with some regularity.
She left that job last spring, though, and in the intervening months of unemployment, she did not have health insurance. Like so many of the “young and healthy,” it was not a priority for her during a financially tight time, and she hedged her bets, knowing that the Affordable Care Act’s requirements would soon force her to purchase insurance. So she waited awhile, but purchased coverage to begin on Jan. 1 – and in the meantime, experienced a series of worsening health problems that led to an ovarian cancer diagnosis on Dec. 30.
It is a big deal, of course, to receive such news. The shock of the c-word alone is enough, and then there is the ensuing treatment to come to terms with and endure. Doing so takes all available faculties – emotional, physical, mental. It is not helped by worry of how the whole endeavor will be funded. And fortunately for my friend, she does not have to devote her limited energy to that – thanks to her new health insurance policy.
Under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, her cancer was not a barrier to coverage, nor was it left off the list of things her insurance would pay for once it kicked in. It did not increase her premiums nor her deductible, which was met almost immediately in January when she had surgery. The relief that provided is immeasurable.
For my friend, Obamacare has been a profoundly good thing that was timed uncannily well. In a matter of less than one month, a situation that could have easily meant medical bankruptcy – with an associated stress quotient that my friend could not afford, either – was distilled to its critical core: getting treatment and getting well. The layer of financial panic evaporated. As my friend, who is not necessarily a big Obama fan, says, “Thank God for Obamacare.”
I don’t intend this story to be a projectable anecdote to defend all the criticisms of the Affordable Care Act, but it is a telling example of the profound impact that health insurance that covers your illnesses can have on someone’s life – in the most literal sense. It is easy for the young and healthy to think that insurance is an unnecessary expense; after all, the fine for not getting coverage will max out at $695 per year or 2.5 percent of household income, whichever is greater. That amount would rival only the most reasonable insurance premiums. But that fine is being phased in slowly; for 2014 it is just a $95 fine or 1 percent of taxable income, tempting those not reliant on help from health insurance to forgo coverage. And who knows, it may be worth the gamble.
Having the option to get coverage when disaster strikes, whatever your politics, can’t be bad, though. For my friend – and I suspect at least a few others – it has cleared the way for her to focus on what really matters: getting well. She is not in a devil’s bargain that would require her to trade her physical health for her financial well-being – a net-negative transaction no matter the outcome. Whatever its shortcomings, the Affordable Care Act, in this one case alone, has done immense good.
Megan Graham is a Herald editorial writer and policy analyst. Reach her at meg@durangoherald.com.
