Lately it's impossible to ignore the din coming from every media source. Purportedly, the noise is related to the health care reform debate, but that's not entirely accurate. What we're hearing is a lot of breathless reporting of the protests at the so-called town meetings. Not only reporting of the protests, but also reporting of the objections to and defenses of the protests. And protests they are.
I've made my opinion clear in the last post. I absolutely support universal health care, and in fact, I believe it is a moral imperative in this, the richest most powerful nation in history. I also think we are about 100 years late in providing it to our citizens. Even so, I can hardly complain about those who are protesting the legislation. What difference is there between these protests and the protests of the anti-war movement in the Viet Nam era (in which I took part enthusiastically.) In this country, we have a right to protest the actions of our government. In fact, if we believe our government is doing wrong, we have an OBLIGATION to protest those actions.
The interesting thing is how conservatives angrily denounced our anti-war demonstrations 40 years ago as unAmerican, and how liberal/progressives are now denouncing the anti-health care reform people as unAmerican when they appear and shout down the speakers at the meetings. http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/10/boehner-vietnam-unamerican/
A real problem has been uncovered by some media, particularly MSNBC, namely that certain paid political lobbyists employed by the high profit health insurance industry have been creating "straw man" organizations that purport to be grassroots organizations with legitimate concerns about the health care initiatives. Even this wouldn't be so bad, but in so doing they are publishing statements and allegations they offer as fact, but which are actually completely untrue. Other high profile politicians, most notably Sarah Palin, have been doing this as well. The most egregious example is the allegations that the legislation would require "death panels" to encourage or mandate euthanasia. THIS IS PATENTLY ABSURD. If any reasonable person thinks about this for even a nanosecond, he/she would realize that first, anyone proposing or voting for such a measure would be bounced out of office at the first opportunity; second, such a provision would be completely unconstitutional by anyone's measure. The Supreme Court would invalidate such a provision immediately. Frankly, without meaning to call anyone names, the allegation is just idiotic. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32412764/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/
But our world contains many ignorant, idiotic people. Sad but true. They are the kind of people who paid no attention to their high school civics or government class, and never read anything that does not agree with their preconceived ideas based upon a kind of loose general distrust of government. They parrot what they are told by professional fearmongers without question.
What these political hacks are doing by putting forth these statements is propagating fear. It's just that simple. They seek to defeat the proposed legislation not by offering reasoned arguments, but by garnering popular support by scaring people half to death with these lies. When challenged to point to specific passages in the bill to support their allegations, they quote passages completely out of context. In the case of Sarah Palin, she (incredibly) quoted passages from the bill which actually said something entirely different from what she claimed was said. All this proved is that I was correct in my suspicion that Ms. Palin is only marginally literate. I am baffled though, by her handlers' failure to minimize her failings.
I guess one of the things that has always disturbed me about extreme conservative politics is that their basic philosophy is fear. Fear of change, fear of progress, fear of trying to improve our lot for fear that we might fail. Any student of American History, even a casual student, knows that while we almost immediately sort of gravitated toward a two party system, the parties have changed a number of times. Even if you try to trace the sources of our modern parties to those of the past, it is easy to see that the parties have traded positions frequently and often mixed positions, at least based upon our current understanding of the two basic political philosophies.
In Lincoln's time, when the Republican party was born, the Republicans were the more progressive. The Democrats, while espousing an egalitarian system, torpedoed their own image by opposing emancipation of the slaves. The conservative Whigs, after the election of 1856, became pretty much irrelevant. The more centrist Whigs united with centrist Democrats (both of whom were at least open to emancipation if not clearly anti-slavery) and formed the Republican party. At the turn of the 20th century, the progressive Theodore Roosevelt was the standard-bearer of the Republicans. It was not until midcentury that Republicans morphed into complete conservatism. It's too early to tell, but it's at least possible that we're on the verge of something similar happening now. The more centrist Republicans are being vilified by the likes of Limbaugh, Cheney, Palin, and Gingrich. The "blue dog" Democrats are finding it hard to agree with their more liberal colleagues. The tattered remnants of the extreme right wing and the neocons have been pretty much hamstrung. Change may be in the wind.
But whichever party has carried the conservative banner, the basic nature of conservatism is timidity. I don't really have that much of a problem with that. I disagree, but completely understand that well-read, reasoned people may disagree with me. My problem is with those who are NOT well-read, reasoned, or rational. The opinion page of my hometown newspaper today illustrates perfectly the source of my frustration. There are at least two letters to the editor in the August 14, 2009 edition of the Daily Inter Lake from Kalispell, Montana, which argue forcefully against the health care reform effort. Both these letters state "facts" which are completely untrue, and/or quote passages from the proposed bill which the letter writer does not understand. One of the letters cites specific examples from the House version of the bill, and completely misstates language the writer quotes in his own letter. I know that the statements are untrue, and I know what the bill actually says and what the language means because I have taken the time and effort to educate myself.
It's sad. I am a lawyer and have to deal with the arcane, murky language of statutory law all the time. It's easy to understand how hard it is to understand the language of the bill. But that's no excuse for making (and publishing) such strong statements without a clear understanding of what one is talking about. Then some other like-minded person reads the letter, accepts, and passes on the misinformation to others. And so it goes.
Another gripe I have is the knee-jerk statements that health care reform is "socialism." Well, one act or bill does not make socialism. Socialism is a theory of economic organization. A entire theory, not just one program. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
However, I agree that universal health care might be, in whole or in part, a socialistic program. So is EVERY government program. I have to laugh when I see Medicare recipients on TV railing that they do not want socialized medicine, when to a large extent that is what Medicare is. Every government program is at least in part, socialized. Think about it. The armed forces, the highway system, public education, police and fire protection, the post office, and on and on. Most of these programs, at least in part, have a private sector component, that is private firms contracting with the government to provide services and materials, but they are organized and regulated by the government. PEOPLE, THIS IS NOT A BAD THING.
How much would you have to pay if you had to pay for all of these socialized programs and systems on your own? How would you even go about hiring soldiers to defend your portion of our country? I have long maintained, and I will argue this point with anyone, that we get more value for our tax dollars than any other money we spend.
So here's my suggestion. Think about how much profit the health insurance companies are taking out of our health care system. Think about those people, like me, who desperately need health care but who cannot buy any health insurance because the insurers wouldn't make enough profit from me. Read this link. http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html Think about how we do not have health care as good as we deserve and about how we pay more for less than any other country. When you hear someone say that the Canadian or English systems are "bad" don't just accept that statement, look it up. (See the "We Love the NHS" movement at various sites posted by British subjects who object to American criticism of their system.)
Above all, when you hear a ridiculous claim (that the health care bill would require doctors to advocate killing old sick people, or that the law would mandate "death panels" -- and that is truly, stupidly ridiculous) you should remember what Ronald Reagan famously said, many times over: "Trust, but verify." Actually, it's pretty funny that Reagan got "trust but verify" from an old Russian proverb, but there you go.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Just get 'er done.
Pretty much every day, I watch the blathering talking heads on TV, grind my teeth and want to throw a shoe at the set. I've been following this health insurance or health care reform legislative effort, and get so frustrated I could scream. The politcians argue a lot of theoretical and ideological mumbo jumbo, but if they were going through what I'm going through, they'd put aside the political crap and just get the job done.
We were headed home after a pretty slow night just before midnight February 18, 1993. My partner Stinko and I had a duo called the Bookhouse Boys, and had a full season, 5 nights a week gig at Moose's on Big Mountain near Whitefish, Montana. We played a lot of 60s rock and roll, blues, country, folk, originals, pretty much a wide mix of stuff. Stinko is a guitar whiz and harmonica wizard. I played rhythm guitar and sang lead. We used a drum machine that had a programmable bass line in it. We'd done a full season the year before, and this was our second season.
The bar manager was oddly disturbed by us using digital drums and bass, so for the second year, she demanded that we add a drummer. This was pretty difficult, as she wouldn't pay us enough to add a bass player as a fourth member. We hired Mondo, a friend of ours who was such a good drummer that he was actually able to play in synch with a programmed bass line. Incredible.
On Feb. 18, I think Mondo was probably playing with us, but he went home on his own. Stinko and I took turns driving to the gig, Wednesday through Sunday nights. I didn't drink while playing, and Stinko did, so regardless of who drove TO the gig, I always drove home. On this night, we'd taken Stinky's Isuzu Trooper. We'd just bought some new sound gear, and our friend Craig Wolf, a sound technician, came with us to help "tweak" the new stuff.
We left the bar just before midnight and headed down the mountain, me driving, Stinko in the passenger seat, and Craig in the back seat. We reached the bottom of the hill, and turned left onto Edgewood Drive from Big Mountain Road. We'd gotten only about 1/4 mile further when I noticed a pair of headlights coming at us at a pretty fast speed. The oncoming car was coming around the north end of the "Dos Amigos curve" (a long extended curve on Edgewood.)
Of course, all of this took seconds, it takes much longer to tell. The headlights appeared to be coming right at us. My first thought was that they'd correct their course. Instantly, it was clear that they wouldn't. Not even having enough time to say anything to Stinko or Craig, I remember touching the brake, steering to the right, and saying, "Oh, shit." I don't remember anything else until I woke up.
When I came to, apparently not much time had passed. I was still in the driver's seat, but the Trooper was crumpled around me. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and had been thrown forward and to the left of the wheel. If I'd worn the belt, I probably would have been crushed by the wheel. I was pinned in the narrow place between the collapsed door, the steering wheel, and the seat. My left foot was turned at an odd angle and stuck between the bottom of the seat and the floor. I was bleeding from the face and had an obvious injury to my left arm, but that trapped foot and the angle of my leg was causing me intense and immediate pain.
I woke up to Craig talking to me from outside the left side of the car. He said he was OK, and I asked about Stinky, who called to me from outside the right side of the car and said he was OK. I later learned that Stinky had cuts and bruises, and that he bruised his kidney, but he was largely all right. Craig wasn't injured at all. I asked after the people in the other car, but they didn't answer me, and I didn't learn that they were slightly injured but all right until the next day. I told Craig he had to help me get my foot out from under the seat. He didn't want to do it, but I insisted, and told him that I was pretty damned self aware, and knew that he wouldn't do any further damage by releasing my foot, so he did. Once that horrible pressure/pain was relieved, I began to fade in and out of semi-consciousness.
It seems that the other car, a Chevy Blazer driven by Jamee Lu Cole along with her passenger Doug Lockhart, hit us head on at the left/front side of our vehicle at a pretty fair rate of speed. Jamee and Doug had been drinking and dancing at the Blue Moon near Columbia Falls the whole evening, then got in their Blazer and headed back toward Jamee's home at the base of Big Mountain Road. They stopped once in Whitefish to pick up some contraceptives, then headed on their way. Doug later testified in court that he'd been mostly passed out, and as they were rounding the big curve, came out of his drunken stupor, saw only trees and telephone poles out the windshield, and thought they were going off the road. Continuing this breathtakingly stupid line of logic, he reached up and grabbed the steering wheel and pushed it to the left. Jamee, being too drunk to fend him off quickly, lost control of the car, it went into a skid, and they slammed into us. We had nowhere to go, because there was a large snow berm on our right.
Emergency crews came quickly, they sawed me out of the car, and transported us to North Valley Hospital. Once there, they realized that they couldn't really do anything for me, so they sent me on to Kalispell Regional Hospital. My wife had gone to bed and had the upstairs phone turned off. Stinky's wife was notified, but had been drinking after work, and didn't feel that she could drive to Whitefish. She tried to call my wife, but no one could reach her because she couldn't hear the phone. Finally, Stinky's wife called my daughter, who went to our house, used her key and went up to wake my wife. I guess my wife had the crap scared out of her to wake up with someone standing at the foot of her bed! Anyway, she came to Whitefish, and rode in the ambulance with me to Kalispell.
It seems that I had a posterior dislocation of my left hip. That means that the leg bone was violently shoved out the back of the hip joint, shattering the top part of the acetabulum. My left shoulder was dislocated. I had a large facial cut, and my nose remained attached by only one small piece of cartilage. I was spurting blood from my nose with every beat of my heart.
By the time they put me on the ambulance to Kalispell, I was pretty much conscious, and quite aware of the massive pain. I wanted them to give me a shot, but they said they had to determine whether I had any internal injuries first. I KNEW I didn't have internal injuries (I could FEEL my injuries) but they wouldn't take my word. It turns out I was right. I yelled at them all the way to Kalispell, utilizing all of my scatological vocabulary and probably making up some more. Finally, when I arrived, they took me to surgery, made the necessary scans or whatever, and put me under. They did closed reductions of the dislocations, and an ear, nose and throat doctor sewed up my face.
I woke up in intensive care later that morning. I was doped up pretty well by then. There was no surgeon in Kalispell who had adequate expertise to work on my hip, so they decided to leave both dislocations alone and they had to figure out who could do the work, and accordingly, where they would have to transport me. So I stayed in Kalispell most of that day. In intensive care, you're supposed to have minimal visitors, but because of my somewhat unique circumstances, I had people coming in and out all day, and phone call after phone call. I'm blessed with a lot of good friends and family, and I heard from a lot of people that day. Finally, around 5 PM, they loaded me on a medical flight and flew me to Spokane, Washington, to Sacred Heart Medical Center.
There's a lot more to the story that I'll leave for another time, but here's how it all ended up. The doctors advised me to have the hip repaired, rather than replaced. Total Hip Replacements (THP) were pretty common in 1993, but they were expected to last only about 20 years, and at that time there were serious issues with redoing hip replacements: it wasn't always possible. I was 46 at the time, s in order to avoid having me hopelessly crippled and in a wheelchair in my 60s, they recommended mending, not replacing the hip. They replaced the shattered acetabulum with a strip of metal secured by nine screws.
I was in the Spokane hospital for 12 days, then I was flown home and spend the next couple of months in a hospital bed in my living room having home therapy. Following that, I was on crutches for about 3 months and continued outpatient therapy, and then on one crutch, then later a cane. It was almost a year after the accident before I could walk without a cane and/or a severe limp.
But I did recover. Jamee Lu was originally convicted of negligent vehicular assault, but later the conviction was thrown out and she pled to DUI. I don't think she served more than one night in jail. Lockhart was never charged with anything. Jamee Lu had minimum liability insurance, and I was able to get her pitiful policy limits as well as the fairly small policy limits of the underinsured coverage I had. I sued Lockhart, but despite his testimony that he'd grabbed the steering wheel thus causing the collision, his insurance company denied liability for almost 1 1/2 years, only coughing up the policy limits the day before the trial. Later I sued his insurance company for bad faith claims dealing and after a 6 year battle, got a few thousand from them. At the time, no one including the opposing insurance companies denied that I had about a half million in injuries. The total I recovered from both Cole and Lockhart's policies, the underinsured coverage, and the bad faith suit was $132,500. After paying my lawyers, costs of suit, and medical bills, I had about enough to buy a nice guitar.
For the next 14 or so years, I experienced daily pain and lost a fair amount of sleep because I couldn't lie down for more than about 6 hours without waking. I had to take anti-inflammatories in pretty big doses every day. But I was able to walk without a limp most of the time, and generally thought I'd gotten off fairly easily considering the magnitude of my injuries. My legal experiences led me to go to law school in 1994, and in 1997 at the age of 50 I graduated from law school, was admitted to the bar, and opened my law practice.
Things went pretty well until early in 2008. I began to experience frequent and intensifying pain in the hip. Over that year, the pain gradually increased until I finally sought advice from an orthopedic doctor in October, 2008. He told me that I needed a THP. The repair worked as long as it did, but now my hip is just bone on bone and there is no cure and little relief any other way. THP costs around $50,000, and of course there are related costs such as therapy, etc.
In the early 90s, my wife, who had worked for First Interstate Bank for 13 years, was "downsized." She held a couple of other jobs, but eventually started her own bookkeeping business because there were few jobs available to her. She was in the unfortunate position of having been promoted to supervisory positions in the bank but not having a college degree, so other banks considered her either over or under qualified depending on the positions they had available. We'd always been insured through her work, but that came to an end.
I graduated with two undergraduate degrees in 1990 and held a part time temporary teaching job in 1991-92, but was never able to get a full time teaching job without moving to some distant city, away from my wife's business, our home, and our family. So in 1992 we found ourselves without health insurance.
After I got out of law school, I investigated the situation. At the time, I was 50, my wife was47, and we were fairly healthy. I had slightly elevated blood pressure, but it wasn't a real problem. My wife had no health problems at that time. Still, in order to get private health insurance, we would have had to pay (at that time) about $8000 per year in premiums for a policy with a $5000 deductible and an 80/20 copay. Since we were both just getting started in our businesses, we decided that we could not afford that cost.
It turned out we were right. My wife had a bout with diverticulitis. She had to undergo several weeks of tests and procedures which cost a total of $8000. If we had bought health insurance only one year earlier, we would have paid $8000 in premiums and the first $5000 of her actual bills, as well as 20% of the remaining $3000 assuming the insurer agreed with the amounts we were billed. Clearly, we were money ahead paying for it ourselves.
So for the next number of years, we just paid our medical bills and prescription costs as they came along. Then we were hit with my hip problem. No insurance, and no way to pay for the surgery up front (which is required as the condition, although crippling, is considered elective surgery.) Once again I looked into the possibility of getting health coverage, knowing that I would have to pay the premiums and wait at least a year for "pre-existing condition" exclusion to expire, assuming it would expire at all --- there's some doubt about that. Today -- if we could get coverage -- it would cost $12,000 per year in premiums for $10,000 deductible coverage, with pre-existing conditions excluded.
The only other health problem I had was that I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes in 2005, but I took it seriously and carefully managed it with diet and exercise keeping my blood sugar and A1c down to excellent levels. However, with the increased hip pain came decreased activity, so my blood sugar began to rise. Then, last fall, I had my annual physical and learned that my PSA prostate test had jumped up above normal levels. Since I have a family history of prostate cancer, my MD advised a visit to the urologist. The urologist advised a biopsy, and in early January I learned I had prostate cancer.
In May I completed the last of 47 radiation treatments and the prognosis is very good. But I now owe $115,000 in medical bills. My hip has gotten MUCH worse, to the point that I am effectively a cripple. I can barely walk at all. I'm on high doses of narcotic pain medication daily. I can't really do anything that doesn't involve sitting. Fortunately, my law practice allows for that. But here's the deal: I can't buy ANY health insurance. No one will cover me. Because of the hip? No. They'd just exclude that as pre-existing. Because of the cancer? No. That treatment's done and the prognosis is very good. It's because of the diabetes. So I have to pay all my own medical costs, and guess what? I can't. I don't have enough money. I have to order my Celebrex for inflammation of the hip from Canada. It costs $226 for the same prescription that would cost $750 in the good old USA.
My only opportunity to have the THP surgery is 1) to get a job that comes with a health insurance benefit (damned unlikely under the circumstances), 2) wait until November of 2011 when I turn 65 and can get on Medicare, or 3) the damned politicians get off their asses and pass a health care reform bill.
Being an old liberal from way back, believing that Ronald Reagan was an evil cretin, and knowing beyond a doubt that government is not only NOT the enemy but plays a vital and important role in all our lives; AND understanding that when you add it up, our tax dollars provide the most bang for the buck of any money we spend; I favor a single payer system. I'm also realistic, though and know that greed centered America with its huge population of willfully ignorant people who will deny anything that doesn't fit within their preconceived beliefs will never agree to a single payer system no matter how logical. So all I'm asking is for a federal law that REQUIRES insurance companies to insure anybody who applies. To prohibit insurers from excluding pre-existing conditions. And last, to regulate premiums, deductibles and copays in the same way that we regulate utility rates -- guaranteeing a fair profit to the company while maintaining the lowest possible rate to the consumer. That's all I ask, folks.
We're the richest country in the world. We believe that we have the best medical system in the world but WE DO NOT. The last time the World Health Organization determined rankings, in 2000, we ranked 37th, behind Costa Rica. We ranked 24th in healthy life expectancy, 72nd in overall health care performance, yet we rank number ONE in per capita health care expenditures. If it ain't broke, don't fix it --- BUT IT"S BROKE.
I get riled up about a lot of political issues, but this time it's personal. I'm 62 years old, and every day that I have to sit still in pain, required to have someone else do almost every daily task for me, being unable to sleep in my bed and only able to sleep in a recliner chair, and not having any semblance of a normal life is one less day that I have to live. So when I hear Republicans with their empty false arguments, or see the talking heads looking into the camera and flat lying to the public, or hear the whining complaints of the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies (check out their profit statements over the past couple of years), or listen to the ignorant fear coming from the poor deluded people who vote against their own interest because they have been so effectively taught to fear the only mechanisms that can actually help them---- I get pissed off. Can you blame me?
We were headed home after a pretty slow night just before midnight February 18, 1993. My partner Stinko and I had a duo called the Bookhouse Boys, and had a full season, 5 nights a week gig at Moose's on Big Mountain near Whitefish, Montana. We played a lot of 60s rock and roll, blues, country, folk, originals, pretty much a wide mix of stuff. Stinko is a guitar whiz and harmonica wizard. I played rhythm guitar and sang lead. We used a drum machine that had a programmable bass line in it. We'd done a full season the year before, and this was our second season.
The bar manager was oddly disturbed by us using digital drums and bass, so for the second year, she demanded that we add a drummer. This was pretty difficult, as she wouldn't pay us enough to add a bass player as a fourth member. We hired Mondo, a friend of ours who was such a good drummer that he was actually able to play in synch with a programmed bass line. Incredible.
On Feb. 18, I think Mondo was probably playing with us, but he went home on his own. Stinko and I took turns driving to the gig, Wednesday through Sunday nights. I didn't drink while playing, and Stinko did, so regardless of who drove TO the gig, I always drove home. On this night, we'd taken Stinky's Isuzu Trooper. We'd just bought some new sound gear, and our friend Craig Wolf, a sound technician, came with us to help "tweak" the new stuff.
We left the bar just before midnight and headed down the mountain, me driving, Stinko in the passenger seat, and Craig in the back seat. We reached the bottom of the hill, and turned left onto Edgewood Drive from Big Mountain Road. We'd gotten only about 1/4 mile further when I noticed a pair of headlights coming at us at a pretty fast speed. The oncoming car was coming around the north end of the "Dos Amigos curve" (a long extended curve on Edgewood.)
Of course, all of this took seconds, it takes much longer to tell. The headlights appeared to be coming right at us. My first thought was that they'd correct their course. Instantly, it was clear that they wouldn't. Not even having enough time to say anything to Stinko or Craig, I remember touching the brake, steering to the right, and saying, "Oh, shit." I don't remember anything else until I woke up.
When I came to, apparently not much time had passed. I was still in the driver's seat, but the Trooper was crumpled around me. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and had been thrown forward and to the left of the wheel. If I'd worn the belt, I probably would have been crushed by the wheel. I was pinned in the narrow place between the collapsed door, the steering wheel, and the seat. My left foot was turned at an odd angle and stuck between the bottom of the seat and the floor. I was bleeding from the face and had an obvious injury to my left arm, but that trapped foot and the angle of my leg was causing me intense and immediate pain.
I woke up to Craig talking to me from outside the left side of the car. He said he was OK, and I asked about Stinky, who called to me from outside the right side of the car and said he was OK. I later learned that Stinky had cuts and bruises, and that he bruised his kidney, but he was largely all right. Craig wasn't injured at all. I asked after the people in the other car, but they didn't answer me, and I didn't learn that they were slightly injured but all right until the next day. I told Craig he had to help me get my foot out from under the seat. He didn't want to do it, but I insisted, and told him that I was pretty damned self aware, and knew that he wouldn't do any further damage by releasing my foot, so he did. Once that horrible pressure/pain was relieved, I began to fade in and out of semi-consciousness.
It seems that the other car, a Chevy Blazer driven by Jamee Lu Cole along with her passenger Doug Lockhart, hit us head on at the left/front side of our vehicle at a pretty fair rate of speed. Jamee and Doug had been drinking and dancing at the Blue Moon near Columbia Falls the whole evening, then got in their Blazer and headed back toward Jamee's home at the base of Big Mountain Road. They stopped once in Whitefish to pick up some contraceptives, then headed on their way. Doug later testified in court that he'd been mostly passed out, and as they were rounding the big curve, came out of his drunken stupor, saw only trees and telephone poles out the windshield, and thought they were going off the road. Continuing this breathtakingly stupid line of logic, he reached up and grabbed the steering wheel and pushed it to the left. Jamee, being too drunk to fend him off quickly, lost control of the car, it went into a skid, and they slammed into us. We had nowhere to go, because there was a large snow berm on our right.
Emergency crews came quickly, they sawed me out of the car, and transported us to North Valley Hospital. Once there, they realized that they couldn't really do anything for me, so they sent me on to Kalispell Regional Hospital. My wife had gone to bed and had the upstairs phone turned off. Stinky's wife was notified, but had been drinking after work, and didn't feel that she could drive to Whitefish. She tried to call my wife, but no one could reach her because she couldn't hear the phone. Finally, Stinky's wife called my daughter, who went to our house, used her key and went up to wake my wife. I guess my wife had the crap scared out of her to wake up with someone standing at the foot of her bed! Anyway, she came to Whitefish, and rode in the ambulance with me to Kalispell.
It seems that I had a posterior dislocation of my left hip. That means that the leg bone was violently shoved out the back of the hip joint, shattering the top part of the acetabulum. My left shoulder was dislocated. I had a large facial cut, and my nose remained attached by only one small piece of cartilage. I was spurting blood from my nose with every beat of my heart.
By the time they put me on the ambulance to Kalispell, I was pretty much conscious, and quite aware of the massive pain. I wanted them to give me a shot, but they said they had to determine whether I had any internal injuries first. I KNEW I didn't have internal injuries (I could FEEL my injuries) but they wouldn't take my word. It turns out I was right. I yelled at them all the way to Kalispell, utilizing all of my scatological vocabulary and probably making up some more. Finally, when I arrived, they took me to surgery, made the necessary scans or whatever, and put me under. They did closed reductions of the dislocations, and an ear, nose and throat doctor sewed up my face.
I woke up in intensive care later that morning. I was doped up pretty well by then. There was no surgeon in Kalispell who had adequate expertise to work on my hip, so they decided to leave both dislocations alone and they had to figure out who could do the work, and accordingly, where they would have to transport me. So I stayed in Kalispell most of that day. In intensive care, you're supposed to have minimal visitors, but because of my somewhat unique circumstances, I had people coming in and out all day, and phone call after phone call. I'm blessed with a lot of good friends and family, and I heard from a lot of people that day. Finally, around 5 PM, they loaded me on a medical flight and flew me to Spokane, Washington, to Sacred Heart Medical Center.
There's a lot more to the story that I'll leave for another time, but here's how it all ended up. The doctors advised me to have the hip repaired, rather than replaced. Total Hip Replacements (THP) were pretty common in 1993, but they were expected to last only about 20 years, and at that time there were serious issues with redoing hip replacements: it wasn't always possible. I was 46 at the time, s in order to avoid having me hopelessly crippled and in a wheelchair in my 60s, they recommended mending, not replacing the hip. They replaced the shattered acetabulum with a strip of metal secured by nine screws.
I was in the Spokane hospital for 12 days, then I was flown home and spend the next couple of months in a hospital bed in my living room having home therapy. Following that, I was on crutches for about 3 months and continued outpatient therapy, and then on one crutch, then later a cane. It was almost a year after the accident before I could walk without a cane and/or a severe limp.
But I did recover. Jamee Lu was originally convicted of negligent vehicular assault, but later the conviction was thrown out and she pled to DUI. I don't think she served more than one night in jail. Lockhart was never charged with anything. Jamee Lu had minimum liability insurance, and I was able to get her pitiful policy limits as well as the fairly small policy limits of the underinsured coverage I had. I sued Lockhart, but despite his testimony that he'd grabbed the steering wheel thus causing the collision, his insurance company denied liability for almost 1 1/2 years, only coughing up the policy limits the day before the trial. Later I sued his insurance company for bad faith claims dealing and after a 6 year battle, got a few thousand from them. At the time, no one including the opposing insurance companies denied that I had about a half million in injuries. The total I recovered from both Cole and Lockhart's policies, the underinsured coverage, and the bad faith suit was $132,500. After paying my lawyers, costs of suit, and medical bills, I had about enough to buy a nice guitar.
For the next 14 or so years, I experienced daily pain and lost a fair amount of sleep because I couldn't lie down for more than about 6 hours without waking. I had to take anti-inflammatories in pretty big doses every day. But I was able to walk without a limp most of the time, and generally thought I'd gotten off fairly easily considering the magnitude of my injuries. My legal experiences led me to go to law school in 1994, and in 1997 at the age of 50 I graduated from law school, was admitted to the bar, and opened my law practice.
Things went pretty well until early in 2008. I began to experience frequent and intensifying pain in the hip. Over that year, the pain gradually increased until I finally sought advice from an orthopedic doctor in October, 2008. He told me that I needed a THP. The repair worked as long as it did, but now my hip is just bone on bone and there is no cure and little relief any other way. THP costs around $50,000, and of course there are related costs such as therapy, etc.
In the early 90s, my wife, who had worked for First Interstate Bank for 13 years, was "downsized." She held a couple of other jobs, but eventually started her own bookkeeping business because there were few jobs available to her. She was in the unfortunate position of having been promoted to supervisory positions in the bank but not having a college degree, so other banks considered her either over or under qualified depending on the positions they had available. We'd always been insured through her work, but that came to an end.
I graduated with two undergraduate degrees in 1990 and held a part time temporary teaching job in 1991-92, but was never able to get a full time teaching job without moving to some distant city, away from my wife's business, our home, and our family. So in 1992 we found ourselves without health insurance.
After I got out of law school, I investigated the situation. At the time, I was 50, my wife was47, and we were fairly healthy. I had slightly elevated blood pressure, but it wasn't a real problem. My wife had no health problems at that time. Still, in order to get private health insurance, we would have had to pay (at that time) about $8000 per year in premiums for a policy with a $5000 deductible and an 80/20 copay. Since we were both just getting started in our businesses, we decided that we could not afford that cost.
It turned out we were right. My wife had a bout with diverticulitis. She had to undergo several weeks of tests and procedures which cost a total of $8000. If we had bought health insurance only one year earlier, we would have paid $8000 in premiums and the first $5000 of her actual bills, as well as 20% of the remaining $3000 assuming the insurer agreed with the amounts we were billed. Clearly, we were money ahead paying for it ourselves.
So for the next number of years, we just paid our medical bills and prescription costs as they came along. Then we were hit with my hip problem. No insurance, and no way to pay for the surgery up front (which is required as the condition, although crippling, is considered elective surgery.) Once again I looked into the possibility of getting health coverage, knowing that I would have to pay the premiums and wait at least a year for "pre-existing condition" exclusion to expire, assuming it would expire at all --- there's some doubt about that. Today -- if we could get coverage -- it would cost $12,000 per year in premiums for $10,000 deductible coverage, with pre-existing conditions excluded.
The only other health problem I had was that I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes in 2005, but I took it seriously and carefully managed it with diet and exercise keeping my blood sugar and A1c down to excellent levels. However, with the increased hip pain came decreased activity, so my blood sugar began to rise. Then, last fall, I had my annual physical and learned that my PSA prostate test had jumped up above normal levels. Since I have a family history of prostate cancer, my MD advised a visit to the urologist. The urologist advised a biopsy, and in early January I learned I had prostate cancer.
In May I completed the last of 47 radiation treatments and the prognosis is very good. But I now owe $115,000 in medical bills. My hip has gotten MUCH worse, to the point that I am effectively a cripple. I can barely walk at all. I'm on high doses of narcotic pain medication daily. I can't really do anything that doesn't involve sitting. Fortunately, my law practice allows for that. But here's the deal: I can't buy ANY health insurance. No one will cover me. Because of the hip? No. They'd just exclude that as pre-existing. Because of the cancer? No. That treatment's done and the prognosis is very good. It's because of the diabetes. So I have to pay all my own medical costs, and guess what? I can't. I don't have enough money. I have to order my Celebrex for inflammation of the hip from Canada. It costs $226 for the same prescription that would cost $750 in the good old USA.
My only opportunity to have the THP surgery is 1) to get a job that comes with a health insurance benefit (damned unlikely under the circumstances), 2) wait until November of 2011 when I turn 65 and can get on Medicare, or 3) the damned politicians get off their asses and pass a health care reform bill.
Being an old liberal from way back, believing that Ronald Reagan was an evil cretin, and knowing beyond a doubt that government is not only NOT the enemy but plays a vital and important role in all our lives; AND understanding that when you add it up, our tax dollars provide the most bang for the buck of any money we spend; I favor a single payer system. I'm also realistic, though and know that greed centered America with its huge population of willfully ignorant people who will deny anything that doesn't fit within their preconceived beliefs will never agree to a single payer system no matter how logical. So all I'm asking is for a federal law that REQUIRES insurance companies to insure anybody who applies. To prohibit insurers from excluding pre-existing conditions. And last, to regulate premiums, deductibles and copays in the same way that we regulate utility rates -- guaranteeing a fair profit to the company while maintaining the lowest possible rate to the consumer. That's all I ask, folks.
We're the richest country in the world. We believe that we have the best medical system in the world but WE DO NOT. The last time the World Health Organization determined rankings, in 2000, we ranked 37th, behind Costa Rica. We ranked 24th in healthy life expectancy, 72nd in overall health care performance, yet we rank number ONE in per capita health care expenditures. If it ain't broke, don't fix it --- BUT IT"S BROKE.
I get riled up about a lot of political issues, but this time it's personal. I'm 62 years old, and every day that I have to sit still in pain, required to have someone else do almost every daily task for me, being unable to sleep in my bed and only able to sleep in a recliner chair, and not having any semblance of a normal life is one less day that I have to live. So when I hear Republicans with their empty false arguments, or see the talking heads looking into the camera and flat lying to the public, or hear the whining complaints of the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies (check out their profit statements over the past couple of years), or listen to the ignorant fear coming from the poor deluded people who vote against their own interest because they have been so effectively taught to fear the only mechanisms that can actually help them---- I get pissed off. Can you blame me?
Monday, August 3, 2009
From out of the blue
Well, after I wrote the first two posts, as luck would have it I lost my username/password and couldn't figure out how to get back in and write more unforgettable prose. Huge loss to the world, I know, but I guess my techno-ignorance was showing.
Last week, I had a surprise from out of the blue which made me see the actual value of these postings, or at least potential value. I got a call from a young woman in California who happened across this blog because she was Googling Larry Engebretson, my childhood friend who was killed in Viet Nam in 1970. It seems that a friend of their family served with Larry, and that Larry volunteered to go out on patrol in this fellow's place the night he was killed. When they got the news that the patrol suffered casualties, this man was the one who found Larry's body. He's had to live with that horrific story for 39 years. He asked this young woman and her mother to help him locate Larry's family, as he wanted to contact them.
As it happens, Larry was not close to his extended family. His father died when we were in high school, and his mother died in the 1980s. I honestly think that I'm the closest living "survivor" that these folks could find. Anyway, from the blog, they found my website and phoned me last week. I spoke with the woman and got emails from her and her mother and told them I'd be glad to talk with their friend. He called me last Saturday.
We had a fairly brief and somewhat awkward, but generally good conversation. He gave me more details about Larry's death, and we agreed that if he ever gets to come here, I'll help him visit Larry's grave and spend some time with him. It might help us both.
Coincidentally, I wrote a song about Larry's de
ath not more than two or three months ago, called "Fly Away." Over the weekend, I found some old photos of Larry, and converted some old 8mm home movies to digital video. I think I'll make a DVD of the photos, do a demo recording of the song, and use it as a soundtrack. Who knows? Bottom line, all of this made me think about my old friend a lot over the past few days. Actually, there are few days that I don't think of him at least in passing, but I've done a lot of reminiscing lately.
Last week, I had a surprise from out of the blue which made me see the actual value of these postings, or at least potential value. I got a call from a young woman in California who happened across this blog because she was Googling Larry Engebretson, my childhood friend who was killed in Viet Nam in 1970. It seems that a friend of their family served with Larry, and that Larry volunteered to go out on patrol in this fellow's place the night he was killed. When they got the news that the patrol suffered casualties, this man was the one who found Larry's body. He's had to live with that horrific story for 39 years. He asked this young woman and her mother to help him locate Larry's family, as he wanted to contact them.
As it happens, Larry was not close to his extended family. His father died when we were in high school, and his mother died in the 1980s. I honestly think that I'm the closest living "survivor" that these folks could find. Anyway, from the blog, they found my website and phoned me last week. I spoke with the woman and got emails from her and her mother and told them I'd be glad to talk with their friend. He called me last Saturday.
We had a fairly brief and somewhat awkward, but generally good conversation. He gave me more details about Larry's death, and we agreed that if he ever gets to come here, I'll help him visit Larry's grave and spend some time with him. It might help us both.
Coincidentally, I wrote a song about Larry's de
ath not more than two or three months ago, called "Fly Away." Over the weekend, I found some old photos of Larry, and converted some old 8mm home movies to digital video. I think I'll make a DVD of the photos, do a demo recording of the song, and use it as a soundtrack. Who knows? Bottom line, all of this made me think about my old friend a lot over the past few days. Actually, there are few days that I don't think of him at least in passing, but I've done a lot of reminiscing lately.Top photo: Larry's high school graduation photo, 1964
Bottom photo: Larry and me in Glacier Nat'l Park, 1968
R.I.P. Larry Douglas Engebretson
August 9, 1946 - July 13, 1970
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