Too Young To Die: The Uninsured Generation

Last night, I found myself on my couch playing Tony Hawk’s Project 8, a game about extreme skateboarding. It was raining outside, so I figured, the best way to kill some time would be to send a ridiculous looking video game version of myself flying over ramps and sailing into walls, face first. This game has an interesting feature: if you have a particularly huge ‘bail’ (skater talk for falling off your skateboard), the game tells you how much your hospital bill would be… and rewards you if you get a bill over $80,000.

Now, I’m not a skateboarder or extreme sportster in any sense of the word. But I did have a bit of a scare recently: I started developing these incredibly intense headaches during strenuous activity. Almost immediately, I went to my local doctor and was told that I needed to see a neurologist. The problem is, I couldn’t afford it. Like 45 MILLION – about 1 in 8 – other Americans, I didn’t have insurance. My story is that the recession had taken its toll and my dad – who insured me – was out of a job. But the coverage was spotty my entire life: I’ve gone through about 30-40 different insurance plans, as he has changed jobs a lot over the past 20 years. This story isn’t unique: the widespread lack of affordable, reliable health coverage for the under-30 population is one of the most terrifying trends in American society that we must work diligently to reverse.

Most of the time we can’t afford it. But sometimes, like the AIDS denialism that Yolanda mentioned earlier today, we’re prone to the condition that as young people, we’re basically invincible. We can run up the stairs, two at a time, without breaking a sweat. Swim a lap? No problem. Carry a couch out of your living room? Easy. This is a relatively new phenomenon combined with classically youthful attitudes. You don’t really think about your insurance in your daily life, so why does it matter? Why even bother to pay such a ridiculous fee to some greedy company for the “in case shit happens” times.

Let’s be real here for a second: you wake up and your stomach hurts. Bad. You go to the hospital, wait several hours until someone finally comes out and sees you, gives you a CAT Scan and throws you on the operating table immediately because they realize that your appendix is about to burst. You’re not only sick, miserable and have a hole in you… if you don’t have insurance, that whole ordeal just cost you about $40,000. More than many people make in a year.

In the next week or so, with a whole load of health care legislation coming up, 99Problems.org is gonna bring you info about what’s going on in Washington to end this ridiculous trend and share some stories from around the country about health care issues that are changing the game and medical tales from people just like you and me, all before you can say “OH MY GOD, SOMEONE GET ME A BANDAID!”

It’s about time we face it: we’re not invincible. And we shouldn’t have to be.

Posted by:

Steve Romain