There are many aspects of adult life which I never thought I had to worry about or even anticipate, growing up, which have become particularly troublesome as I progress into my young adult years. Among these, I think one of the most daunting aspects of adulthood for young people and mature adults alike, has become seeking adequate healthcare. It is no secret that the United States healthcare system is not without its many flaws, however, I was completely unprepared for the challenges which would come with seeking healthcare when I became an adult.
As of 2015, 33 Million Americans are living without health insurance. Additionally, 41 percent of working age Americans are currently paying off medical bill debt, or are struggling with problems due to medical bills. The struggle to obtain healthcare has become the cause of 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies, and of these 75 percent are uninsured individuals. Although I never thought about the difficulties of obtaining healthcare and health insurance as I matured and moved out, it has become apparent to me that the problems of these 33 Million uninsured Americans, and Americans who live with coverage that can hardly be considered adequate, cannot be ignored.
My personal experience with the struggle to access adequate healthcare is threefold, and each experience illuminated a different aspect of our system which is in need of desperate repair.
My first experience with our broken system came when my fiancé became exposed to Lyme disease earlier this summer. My fiancé “aged out” of his family coverage and since he (like most college students) does not have a full time job where benefits, such as insurance, can be acquired all of his medical needs are an out of pocket expense. With this in mind, doctor trips must be kept limited, however since Lyme disease is potentially deadly it was a no brainer that even without insurance he would need to see a healthcare professional. While the cost of his doctor visits and prescription did not come out of my pocket, it is no secret that the care he received was neither free nor cheap, and had the symptoms been caught any later the care he needed would have been unaffordable, which would have cost him his health and college career, or worse his life.
My second experience with the struggle to receive healthcare in the U.S. came when I needed to fill a prescription which my insurance did not cover. I had to drive over an hour to a healthcare clinic location in an attempt to fill the prescription, only to be denied. After several stressful calls to the physician who wrote my prescription, I was able to find a similar and “suitable” generic alternative at a different pharmacy. After driving an hour back the opposite direction, I was able to fill my prescription at a different location. However, the price of the generic medication was still outside of the bounds of what is affordable for a college student with a part-time job. Unfortunately, because the generic alternative has not performed as adequately as my physician and I had hoped, I will have to drive three hours in order to visit a physician and talk about what healthcare options are in my price range.
The last experience I have with the broken healthcare system perhaps sums up everything that is wrong with healthcare in the United States. When talking with an acquaintance about the struggle to afford antibiotics without insurance coverage, the acquaintance mentioned that her relative who is uninsured goes to the pet store and buys the antibiotics meant for fish and takes them when she is ill. She assured me that this is safe because the antibiotics are the same as the ones used for humans, only more affordable. The realities revealed by this story saddened me, as well as leaving me completely horrified. If it is true that these antibiotics are the same as the ones used to treat people, and I cannot say that I know they are, then why is is that these medications are affordable enough to feed to animals but not to sick human beings? If the antibiotics are in fact not the same, then it is perhaps worse that our system has forced humans into taking unfit medicine intended for animal consumption.
While it is true that statistics such as the price of prescription drugs is 50 percent higher in the United States than in other countries, and that health insurance premiums have risen three times faster than American wages over the past decade, are alarming, the struggle to access healthcare is more personal that just cold statistics. The struggle to access healthcare is costing people their lives and livelihoods, and allowing Americans to become just as sick and broken as the healthcare system they live under.
