Remember the story we told you about a couple weeks ago, about a ridiculous refusal on the Medicaid’s part to pay for a man’s breast cancer treatment because of archaic laws that do not cover men who get this typically female cancer? Well apparently, the outcry it caused has done some good.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services called the man recently and gave the great news that they have decided to push his coverage request through. Wow. So it must feel good knowing that a disease doesn’t give you an automatic death sentence because insurance will not pay for full and complete treatment.
I thought about that story a lot after I wrote about it, because I thought it was a really sad state of affairs that someone who can’t afford isn’t given the same fighting chance to save their life from cancer as a person who has regular health coverage. It seems to me there is a real inequality there.
There are millions of people today in the US that depend on federally or locall funded programs to get treatment for serious diseases. That is because not everyone can afford to pay for their health insurance, or they do not have employers who pay for even a part of their coverage.
They are therefore forced to go without medical treatment in some cases, and that is just sad. This story has a happy ending. But for every one of these, there are other stories that are just downright tragic. People on the hook for thousands of dollars because insurance won’t cover something devastating.
People’s savings being demolished because of medical bills. People dying unnecessarily because they either couldn’t afford a treatment or couldn’t afford to go to a quality doctor and medical center. Hopefully we can help to improve this situation, but unfortunately I don’t think Obamacare will even do that.
