Health Care Reform for Small Biz...for All

Boomers in Business:
My circle of friends includes other freelancers, medical professionals, musicians and music teachers, entrepreneurs, graphic artists, writers, camp directors and substance abuse counselors. Only a few have health care supplied by an employer.

I am particularly fortunate -- I attained the freedom to do what I love for a living by first putting in my time as an employee of the State University of New York and the Counties of Westchester and Rockland. As a result, I have a retiree health plan that will carry me till I become Medicare eligible, and back me up -- by paying whatever Medicare doesn't.

What it's like to be without heath care coverage
In the 1980s, when I divorced, I had no health insurance for myself or my daughter. We got by, eating healthfully, paying for doctors out of pocket and keeping our fingers crossed until I finally found a job with benefits. I remember my enormous sense of relief when that happened.

Around that time my daughter needed a great deal of testing and treatment for severe allergies, and I was able to see to it that she got everything she needed without missing much school.


Medical care's more costly than ever before
At today's prices, we would not have made it. Allergies, athsma, anxiety, rhinitis and sinusitis, bronchitis and hypothyroid are all conditions that seem to pass from one generation to the next in my family. As such, they could all have been counted against me as "preexisting conditions." Again, I was lucky.

What it's like to have good health care coverage
Being covered by a plan that allows me to choose my own doctors and has never balked at paying for a lab test has meant incredible peace of mind. I've been hospitalized five times over the last 12 years -- about 25 days in all.

My husband, covered by my plan, has been hospitalized three times in the last five years, twice for kidney cancer. The cancer part was not easy, and took a lot of phone calls, but in the end, it was my PPO plan provider that assigned us a case worker who helped us find the information, doctors and hospitals that would be best for Stuart's condition...almost all of which was covered.

What it's like to fend for yourself
The flip side, however, is that we were also people with medical insurance who were jerked around by hospital anesthesiology providers -- on several occasions. Everything would be covered except the anesthesiology -- because the hospital had agreements with private anesthesiology practices rather than its own staff anesthesiologists.

Those private practices were free to reject our insurance payments and demand enormous cash payments from us, and there was no recourse. Our experiences ran the gamut from the anesthesiology groups refusing to speak to us or negotiate, to hounding us with collection agency calls and quietly threatening lawsuits. I don't know that there's anything in the reform plans that will fix this -- I hope so.


Do we need health care for everyone?
Of course, we do. Costs are now so prohibitive, no one can make it without health insurance. We're way beyond the place where the neighbors bring in casseroles for a week, and the church takes up a modest collection. Those communities, for the most part, no longer exist. We must forge a national community. With everyone on health care insurance, the risks are spread out and the cost goes down.

Most of my friends purposefully keep their small businesses small -- it's hard enough providing health care for your own family, let alone for employees. Because the reforms support lower costs, they are good for small business, whether you have employees or not. Let your congressional representatives know you support HC reform and a public option.