Taking care of ourselves isn't always easy.

I'm most unlikely to have made the decision to give up a well-paid consulting career to have a better and more fun life as a freelance journalist/writer without knowing that the NHS would be there for me if I needed it.

And this very reason is why I doubt I'll ever be able to write seriously. Because I have to work a full-time job to have medical insurance. And unlike some people, my brain can't switch from work to write quickly, so...

Yeah. I sympathize, and also think you're amazing for doing what you do. *hugs*

I hear you. My entire family is on the 'don't get sick' plan; I write full time because the odds of me getting a regular job locally that offers benefits that wouldn't completely impoverish us? Close to non existant; I figure if we're going without anyway, we might as well have the nothing that offers MORE financial stability. It is very sad indeed when that's writing.

Ah, yes, the "don't get sick" plan, or it's lower rate option, "dear god, please don't let it be serious when I do get sick" plan. There needs to be a better way.

It's a horrible system. I hope the America manages to sort a better one out.

That is awful. There may be many issues with the NHS but if people turn up that need treating, they will be treated. No-one should have to worry about whether or not they can afford to pay or healthcare.

Some of the things this country does sickens me to no end because of the greed involved. :-(

Having now been among the unemployed for the second long period in my life it throws things like this into stark contrast amidst everything else. My family just got over strep and the only reason we did so without trouble was my wife's insurance. Were it not for that we'd still be sick. (And we're both still ignoring certain health issues that should really be checked out.)

Why is it we can't overcome the greed in this system? How many people have to die needlessly before this gets fixed? B-(

As for the notes about not being able to write full time I'm in agreement. There should be a way for artists (writers among them) to pursue their art without having to worry about themselves or their family getting sick. It would go a long way towards giving a way for artists or indeed anyone who makes their living independently considerable stability in their lives.

That is so awful.I am so sorry you have to go through this.

Having been on the "don't get sick" plan and having been stupid enough to suffer a stupid household accident requiring about half an hour of actual doctor time that could have lost me an arm or killed me if left untreated, I am now on the "I hope my potential employer does not check my credit score" plan, and the "I hope I don't have to move because my new housing will likely check my credit score" plan.

I have Hashimoto's Hypothyroidism, which can kill you. People tend to look at it and go "it's a thyroid problem, you'll get fat, no big deal", but untreated, getting fat is the worst of your problems: it can cause coma or heart failure. And I got REALLY sick, and the ONLY reason I didn't end up in one state or the other (as my presentation was particularly bad--though I didn't gain much weight) was because as a grad student, I happened to go to a college that offered 1. good health insurance and 2. had a great on-site medical office that I could see for free, where the doctors were paid a salary and could therefore spend the time to read my ENTIRE FILE (which was by that time very thick) to figure out what was wrong with me. Which one of them did. I swear to god I've considered naming my firstborn after the her.

I am much better now, and thankfully although thanks to my husband's current job I now have excellent medical insurance (which is no small part of the reason he's working this job rather than freelancing as a copy and television writer--something he could do successfully if he devoted himself full time to it; my husband is good and experienced in that field and if you watch a Viacom network, you've probably seen something he worked on in some part) that covers both the medication that keeps me alive and my doctor's visits, I didn't have health insurance for nearly six years through no fault of my own. I was doing EVERYTHING they said you were supposed to do: I was working nearly full time, I was putting myself through college because my parents couldn't afford to send me (or to insure me) but neither my job nor my undergraduate school offered health insurance. My undergrad school offered it ONLY to foriegn students. I was literawlly at one point on my hands and knees begging the president of the college to let us domestic students buy in.

He brushed me off. "Nobody will want to do it." he said. "And I can't make an exception just for you. Go the the ER if you get sick."

(he occasionally wonders why I won't participate in any of their fund-raising or promotional materials; he's dense, I guess)

I don't think I'd have had to get as sick as I did if they had, and I lived in fear that I would get something serious, like bronchitis, or that my appendix would go, and that would be all she wrote: I'd either be dead or buried up to my eyeballs in medical debt, and there would go college, only I'd already be up to my neck in college debt and I wouldn't even have a degree to show for it.

That this didn't happen to me was, quite honestly, pure dumb luck. I know other people it happened to.

You know what's sad? It's such a treatable condition and synthroid is cheap, cheap, cheap, but without insurance I was so afraid to go the doctor (or the ER), I would never have gotten it checked until I was extremely ill.

And even when I had health insurance I STILL got dropped (retroactively, even, making the thyroid problem that had NEVER had a coverage gap a "pre-existing condition" and impossible to ensure until my husband took a job with a health plan!) by one insurer last year because I had an echo-cardiogram to confirm that a heart murmur I'd developed was innocent (it was, they still dropped me, and my attempts to fight the dropping proved futile: the state kept telling me that the health insurance company assured them my coverage loss was "within internal policy" because the company told them it was. God I wish I was making that up, but I'm not: they accepted that it wasn't pretextual, even though I had access to information suggesting it was, because the company told them it wasn't.)

I hate our health insurance industry. I hate, hate, hate, hate them, and I don't say that lightly, and it makes me furious that I have relatively little choice but to buy into their system.

And it makes me more angry the only first world country that's so eager to let the poor die, and I have a WHOLE other rant on that, but I'll save it. I've talked long enough.

People tend to look at it and go "it's a thyroid problem, you'll get fat, no big deal",

I cannot get over the sheer ignorance of some people. Part of my old job was monitoring autoimmune conditions in patients (including Hashimotos) and it is so not the same thing as the more usual hypothyroidism. Although it's awful that you can't get treated for either, since all kinds of hypothyroidisms are fairly easy to treat with thyroxine (or whatever it's called in the states) and monitoring of TSH, CT3 and Thyroid peroxidase.

I'm so sorry that you got stuck with that. The NHS may suck in a lot of ways but we have it and it's so much better than the alternative.

Thank you for this. I've worked three jobs, or dangerous jobs, or shit jobs, or jobs I've hated, because I have cancer and can NOT afford to be uninsured. Some people aren't as lucky as I've been in finding jobs with insurance at all.

I had a friend who destroyed her GPA because she had to stay a full time student to be treated for breast cancer.

She was nineteen. =\

That would be why I work in a job that is eating my soul, with a supervisor who point blank told me that sick days are not for taking when you're sick, but that you should bank them in case something really bad happens.

Oh, you mean like when I got whooping cough from a co-worker who came in sick, because sick days are not for taking if you're just sick?

I really hate corporate/higher ed culture in this country.

Yeah, and I have chronic asthma. Without insurance my inhalers run close to $180 a month... With insurance they're still about $70/month. For the privilege of breathing.

I thank God that MA had medical insurance available to me for free when I was unemployed for two years. I never had to use it, but it was there.

Speaking as someone who grew up in Australia and who now lives in the UK, the idea of a first world nation *not* having some species of universal health care is insane to me. And the more I read about American poverty, the more I wonder: how much of it can be blamed on a lack of accessible medicare? How many people get into insurmountable debt because they got sick, couldn't afford to see a doctor, and therefore missed too much work and lost money, or were fired for too many absences? How many children are raised in needless poverty because that's what happened to their parents? How many of them never leave it because it eventually happens to them, too? My parents have been nagging me for the past few years to get private health insurance, and possibly this might be the year that happens, but even without it, as an adult I've always been able to go to a bulk-billing doctor's surgery and know that more than half of what the visit costs will be paid for by the state, or that I'll get a rebate on a dental check-up. Having lived in the UK for a month, my husband was able to go to a doctor yesterday and get a prescription for his ventalin. Anyway, I'm rambling, but the thought of living in a country where any of the times I was properly injured or sick - when I hurt my neck so badly I couldn't walk for four days, when I wrenched my back, the times I've fainted at work, all my sprained ankles and heart palpitations - and couldn't go to a doctor because I couldn't afford it, or because I was unemployed or no longer living at home ... that terrifies me.

the idea of a first world nation *not* having some species of universal health care is insane to me

Yes, this. I might be resentful some days when I see that 40+% of my income go to the state in taxes and various insurances, but on the other hand I really love the fact that I can always go see a doctor when I need to, and will be able to keep doing so even if I loose my job, or want to go free-lance, or ... .

I hate that story. I've heard other iterations of it too, for years. Friend of a friend who died of pneumonia, or of complications from untreated diabetes, or what they hoped was just a cold.

I hope things even out eventually, so that we can have more writers and artists and musicians who can afford to do what they love and survive. :/

I had a friend who worked for an HMO who died basically as a result of a combination of not being able to take time off when she got sick and not being able to afford to go to the doctor.

Signal boosted. Info like this needs to get out there, often and loudly.

I hate, hate, hate your country's insane medical system. It's heartless and cruel and just wrong. I want to rescue all my US friends from it and bring them to live over here. The NHS is imperfect, certainly, but Ms Hall would not have faced that lonely, unnecessary death.

One of the things I was most thankful for all along in the situation with my mother-- I meant to make a "things I'm thankful for" post, but time got away from me-- was the existence of Medicare and Medicaid.

If she hadn't been on Medicare, I'd be literally destitute right now. And if it hadn't been for Medicaid, the state program, I'd have been destitute long *before* now, because I'd have had to quit my job to care for her full time. With no income to, y'know, *live* on. Her social security might-- *might*-- have covered the cost of her monthly meds. And that would've been it; either Tony or Fishy would've had to support us, if their incomes would've stretched that far. And even if that seems like the best option to people, it would be one less productive person in the workforce, and she would've gotten incredibly *bad* care, as I would not have had the necessary medical training, equipment and resources.

I remember tearing my hair out looking for eldercare places; good eldercare is for the rich, plain and simple. It's absolutely *insane* that the reason she got good care is that she was *poor* enough to qualify for DSHS benefits; if she'd been just an ordinary person, we'd have been too poor to pay for private-pay places, and too well off to qualify for any assistance.

...I meant to add, that's the really insane thing-- politicians get so afraid of "socialism" of having a healthcare system for all-- but there's one that's already in place, and it works. It's not perfect, by any means, but it's there, it cared for my mother for years; the infrastructure is already there to be used. If they would just extend Medicare to apply to everyone... there's already a system, set up, working, we know how to run it, why don't we just *DO* it???

Lack of health insurance is a terrifying thing (right now all the campus sidewalks are covered in ice and I'm terrified I'll break a limb).

There are, however, ways to for self-employed individuals to insure themselves. I'm not sure exactly what you require from an insurance plan, but you might want to look into self-employed and freelance options. And if you belong to a writers' guild there are usually ways to get health insurance through them. I realize this isn't going to work for everyone, but it's certainly worth exploring.

There are some 'group' plans where artists group together in order to get some form of health insurance; as a freelance artist I've looked into the options several times. It can be done, but I have to say that I never found an option that was as good as the ones I was able to get through my better half's company policies. Which is saying something, since they haven't always offered very good coverage. These would be better than nothing, of course, but from my own research into it I'd bet my medical coverage that Seanan is getting much better coverage at a much lower price through her current job than she would through some of the artist groups.

I just remember when John Scalzi did a post on 'how to make a career as a writer', one of his pieces of advice was having a spouse with a 9-5 job and health insurance that covered you (or, obviously, live in a country where your insurance is covered by the government and you don't have to worry about 'what if I get really sick'). How many more wonderful writers would we have if they didn't have to worry about once-in-a-lifetime misfortune and could focus on 'can I make enough writing to cover day-to-day expenses'?

Also, you are an amazing woman to do all that you do AND work 8 hours to keep your insurance.

tiny little correction. We Canadians and every one else who has universal health care PAY for it. Not the government. We pay it through our taxes. We are lucky that we have it, but the government doesn't PAY for it.

It's one of the reasons our taxes are higher than yours. I don't mind at all I love our system.

I have the opposite problem. My husband and I are both on disability, and my husband is also on Medicare. Neither of us can work a full-time job.

But I write. And I want to publish.

The question in my life is, "How much can I make with my writing before they take my disability payments, foodstamps, and subsidized housing away?" Because I damn sure can't make enough money writing to replace these things.

We're very, very poor. A little extra money a month would be wonderful. But because of this, I fear too much success. I like to think I'm a pretty good writer, but Laurell K. Hamilton or Sherrilyn Kenyon I ain't.

Every day I am thankful that mbarr's firm has domestic partner benefits. This means that I can go to the doctor for the pain in my hand. This means that I don't have to worry about slipping and falling or getting in an accident or falling ill.

It means that I have access to the benefits of corporate America. And it saddens me that I essentially only get those benefits because my boyfriend loves me enough to pay for them.

That's why I end up contributing to any of the fundraisers I see for situations like Sooj had - I'm lucky, I've got insurance now (I didn't for 20 years) and I have enough money that I can give something without putting myself in the poorhouse. I still help out my ex's family whenever I can, because they ARE in the poorhouse. Healthcare in this country is just so screwed up...

This is NOT an answer, but most hospital billing departments are willing to work with uninsured patients with large bills if the patient can show that they're trying to pay the bill.

My father's girlfriend works for a hospital billing department, and a quiet, dirty secret that doesn't get told very often is that they will, very often, cut the amount owed by someone by 80% if they work with them on what they can afford. They can't do anything if people just hide from the bills (which tends to be my default method, unfortunately), but those that work with them usually can set up a payment plan that they can afford at a fraction of the outrageous costs they've been charged.

Last year, a friend of mine who suffers from regular kidney stones got one lodged and ended up in the hospital with an infection. He had to have at two or three operations to deal with the lodged stone, removing the stones, and follow up stuff. At this point, he was unemployed and uninsured. I encouraged him to talk with the billing department and explain the situation and they did exactly what my dad's girlfriend said they would. He still has a significant amount to pay, but he has a manageable payment and they waived at least 75% of the fees.

It's definitely not an answer, but please please please, see a doctor if you need it. (You meaning anyone without insurance fearing large bills)

Doctors will often work with people too, especially if you are an existing patient.

When my last health insurer dropped me--after I'd run up a bunch of bills for cardiology testing plus the continued treatment of my thyroid--my doctor, the blood work labs, and the cardiologist all knocked significant chunks off my bill and then gave me a payment plan. My doctor continued to see me for a reduced fee--$30 for a phone visit, $50 if I had to come in--while we waited for my husband to have enough time at work for his new insurance to kick in.

I still ended up having to pay about a thousand dollars, but the original bill was four, and they let me pay over the course of a year.

I know a lot of doctors and most of them genuinely care about and want to help their patients (and they hate the insurance industry more than we do, most of the time.)