Episode 1 here. Episode 2 here.
Who’s Next? Part 3
I wandered through the house the rest of the day, body on automatic as I did the things that needed to be done, while my brain whirled. Nothing came to me. My sleep was disturbed all night with dreams of giant monsters chasing me down streets, pills falling from the sky but evaporating just before a person could get them.
By dawn I got up, a headache pounding. I made some tea and read a book. The news was too depressing to turn on so early in the morning. By the time the hubby got up, I had his coffee ready to brew and eight chapters of my book read.
He gave me a kiss on the top of my head as he passed by to turn on the coffee maker. “You’re up early.”
“Yeah.” I closed the book and pushed it to the center of the table. “I had bad dreams. It seemed appropriate to just get up.”
“How you feel?”
I shrugged. “Calmer.” I looked in my tea mug, empty. I got up and clicked the hot water maker on. “I don’t have a plan yet. Maybe form a group. I don’t know.” I put a teabag in the mug. “I guess I just need to let it simmer in my head.”
He poured his coffee and sat at the table, hands around the mug. “You’ll think of something.”
He was right. I knew that. But I wanted to do something right now. We sat together while we drank our tea and coffee. It was nice that we could sit together, not talking, just being together.
The day moved on. I read more on-line articles. Looked at groups. But nothing popped at me as an action I could take. I sent more email to my representatives. They should understand how I felt.
It was a week before I found an answer. It was an accident, really. I had wandered onto an article that talked about the origins of the insurance industry. It turns out that insurance has been around for thousands of years but health insurance only since the late 1800’s. I toyed with the idea of going back to the original concept, of people paying premiums into a group pot, getting paid back when required. But the tangle of regulations, the need for portability across hospitals and doctors, and other technical barriers made me drop the idea. I thought about the possibility of the insured being paid directly and they would pay whoever was providing service, but the other problems seemed too much. I toyed with talking to an insurance agent but dropped the whole idea as ridiculous.
Even as the days passed, I kept coming back to the insurance idea. Couldn’t the maze of payouts be simplified. I went over my own contract with the insurance company. There was a provision for everything. So many things were denied outright, or only partially covered. It was all up to some mystery team of actuaries or high school drop-outs or someone. All of whom were being paid not to shell out any coverage. I sighed and put the document back in the drawer.
In the meantime, the news showed people protesting outside of the major insurance company headquarters and at the Congress. People were angry. Death rates were going up and the evening news was interviewing one family after another of dead parents and children, all who had been fine with their meds but were now dead when the insurance companies cut them off from expensive treatments.
People stopped paying the insurance companies. The stock market was going down. Hospitals were also losing money as people couldn’t afford to go to the hospital. The ripple effect through the entire economy was taking every business down as their employees died or stayed home, too sick to work.
“It’s happening so fast,” I told my husband as we watched the news.
He shook his head. “Had to happen. Such a large percentage of people have medical issues.”
That was true. And those that didn’t, were now struggling to take care of family members who did. Over the next few weeks people were shouting at each other on the protest lines and in Congress and the statehouses. Blows were exchanged. International travel dried up as travelers avoided the medical mess in the country, afraid they wouldn’t be able to get care if they were injured or fell ill.
What to do? No one could decide. And the country spiraled out of control.
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