Personal Stories Emphasizing the Need for Reform in Health Care and Health Insurance

This week I found a fascinating article in The Washington Post entitled, “On a Street in Gaithersburg, Health-Care Anxiety Abounds.” Great title, huh? Anyway, the title immediately attracted me because in all the stories about the need for health care reform I go through in order to bring you this article each week, it’s the personal stories and anecdotes that hit me the hardest. Therefore, let’s take a look at the lives of some of the people who live on this street merely thirty miles from Washington D.C.

The people on this street have a wide variety of health issues, typical of any street you’d find in America. Some have asthma, some glaucoma, some have rare genetic diseases. What they all have in common is a shared frustration with the health insurance industry, a common worry about their coverage, a sort of community-confusion about how the system works (or doesn’t) and how it affects them. As the article said, “When it comes to their health care, no one is completely happy. Everyone has a complaint. And nobody understands the way the current system works, only that it doesn’t work very well.”

While lawmakers debate this issue merely thirty miles away, it feels like a world away to the people on Linden Hall Lane, the street in question. One person on the street wonders why so many people are afraid of change. “I don’t know what amazing coverage these people have that they’re so afraid of losing,” she laments. Others are so afraid of changing anything for fear of losing coverage that they stay quiet, something that won’t help in the coming months when public debate on this issue will matter more than it ever has before.

What seems to scare people most are the financial implications of health insurance form, whether real or imagined. They also don’t like the lack of information from their health insurance companies, such as why certain things won’t be covered like needed medications.

I won’t go into the detail of all the stories here, suffice it to say they’re familiar, sad, tragic, and scary. I usually don’t link to articles, but I invite you to read the full article here. It’s a powerful read. Until next week, have a happy and healthy week ahead.