My two cents on health care reform

So one of the many pluses of moving to Maine is that my senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are both moderate, independent Republicans who may have an influential role in creating an American health care system we can be proud of. So, I finally buckled down and put some of my basic feelings about health care reform on paper and sent it to them. Here they are. I would encourage you to do the same.

Dear Senator Snowe,
I recently moved to Maine for a job at Bates College and for the first time in our married life (8 years), we all have health care. I have been in graduate school the last seven years and during that entire time the only time my wife was insured was while we were living and studying in Japan and Taiwan. The care we received in both countries was affordable, accessible, and high quality. My youngest daughter was actually born in Taiwan. It baffles me that we have not yet been able to accomplish that here. It is also a shame that foreign countries take care of American citizens better than America does. We are the richest nation in the world, I think we should be able to afford health care for all of our citizens. Access to quality care should be a universal right, like we have decided education is. I also believe the universal coverage, greater access to preventive care and screening services, and better regulation will bring costs down for everyone. We are all paying the price for a system that no longer works for most of its participants.
Even though I was covered with an expensive college plan at a university with a reputation for medical research, every time I had to use my insurance I spent hours on the phone with insurance representatives trying to figure out why they were trying to bil me for the entire amount. I remember feeling sick when I got a bill for $57,000 after an ACL reconstruction surgery. I would talk to someone on the phone and they would tell me it was cleared up and then a few weeks later I would get another bill. I would call again and the process would be repeated. I can't remember how many times I had to do this before it was resolved. Later a friend told me he had the same surgery in Oregon and entire bill was under $5,000. I was shocked there was such a huge difference, but the system is such that I never heard a price, or even had the opportunity to ask. Even if I had, based on previous experiences, I doubt the doctor could have told me, since he doesn't know what insurance I have. This is in contrast to our experiences in Taiwan and Japan where were given choices and told the price of services upfront, including the total and what we would be responsible for. Since everyone knew what the health insurance covered and at what rates it was easy to make wise decisions based on the necessity of certain services. I never felt like I was compromising my families health in anyway, but we could reduce our expenses by sacrificing some small amenities. Again, this is in contrast with my experiences in America, where each visit is so fraught with uncertainty about costs, that even with quality health insurance, as a graduate student with a very limited budget, I would often delay or avoid going to the doctor because I never knew what it was going to end up costing me. I tried to study it out, but every year it changed and I had a very busy life. This is another external cost of our extremely complicated and inefficient system.
We finally have health insurance, but it is expensive for me and for the university. I'm grateful for it, but I sympathize with all of the people who don't have anything and stay up at night worrying about their kids. We are all paying the price for a system that doesn't work. When someone you love gets hurt, you shouldn't have to wonder if you can afford to take them to the doctor. Doing nothing means being stuck with a system under which almost everyone suffers in some way.
I understand that your vote is extremely important in this coming Senate process. Please vote to help bring about universal care for all Americans. Like universal education, I believe that this is a basic part of our right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. In some ways this is a complicated issue, in other ways it is very simple. Although there are many businesses that profit from the present model, most people don't care about the details, they just want to know that if something happens that they can't fix themselves, they can get the help they need. (Hopefully without having to declare bankruptcy or fight their insurance company every step of the way, if they're lucky enough to have one.) The current system is failing. No system is perfect, but I think we can do better than this. Sincerely, Jesse Palmer