When you have your health…

I used to wonder what people meant when they said, “When you have your health you have just about everything.” That was a long, long time ago before the ravages of age and disease had hit close to home.

Older and wiser now, I see my family is very much a microcosm of a typical American family in our experience with health care and disease. Within our extended family, we have experienced nearly all the major killers and some of the more obscure health conditions.

Through it all, most of us have had access to health care insurance. That is less typical. Even my natural father, an itinerant artist, had veteran’s benefits to cover his hospitalization when he died from a head injury at age 46, as a result of a motorcycle accident.

My maternal grandfather lived long into his ‘90s with heart disease that had been diagnosed in his early ‘50’s. He spent his later years living close by Walter Reed Army hospital in Dayton, OH because the care there was so good, and it was fully covered by his retired officer’s benefits. He would be scandalized now to know about the decline in care at Walter Reed.

When my brother contracted the HIV virus, the disease it caused barely had a name yet. AIDS drug therapies were in their infancy, but he got enough to keep him alive and active for eight years with the virus, before he died. His health care was paid for with his Screen Actors Guild insurance.

As freelancers and small-business owners, my husband and I pay a hefty sum for our health insurance, but it has been worth it over the years. His cancer treatment alone would have wiped us out long ago, without it.

Four years ago this winter, I went to New Hampshire for a week to stump for Howard Dean in the Presidential primaries. We called it “freezin’ for a reason” as I recall. The most memorable moment of that memorable time was a conversation I had with a couple who lived in a double-wide trailer in Claremont, NH. The man was a 58-year-old kidney transplant patient. The cost of his medicine was so high that they had to make choices every day between food and medicine.

As a single parent, my mother worked to provide everything for us, including our health care. When she was older, and no longer employed in the youth-centric business of advertising, her health suffered for lack of adequate insurance. She sought alternative medicine through untraditional providers, but the underlying causes of her ultimate disease of dementia went unmonitored for years. She could not afford the prescription blood pressure medicine that would have staved off the mini-strokes that also went untreated. In the end, Medicaid did provide for her nursing home care. By that time, everything she had worked for all her life had been spent.

Last weekend, our son decided to join us for a weekend in the country. Conor is 20 now and, like so many young people, he is “underemployed.” Because he is not a full-time college student, he is no longer covered by our family health insurance. We basically cross our fingers and are glad he doesn’t engage in extreme sports.

After an afternoon outdoors in the snow photographing trees, Conor came inside and proceeded to romp with our dog on the carpet. Fifteen minutes later, he lay on the couch wheezing and gasping for air. From what we could tell, he was having an asthma attack.

Last summer, two friends, Pam Jones and Lynn Elfert, died from asthma attacks. Before that, I had never known asthma was deadly. Pam’s asthma could have been treated with access to affordable health care. Unfortunately, her circumstances did not allow for it.

As I was working on this column, an old friend called with the news of his recent marriage. What had led him and his girlfriend of 28 years to tie the knot? Why, health insurance, of course.

Maybe that old adage should be changed to “When you have your health insurance, you have just about everything.”

- Cass Collins

Phone: 518/402-9425

Email: lflands@gw.dec.state.ny.us

Website: dec.ny.gov/lands/38969.html