Today's Midterm Message: Life Is Not A Pre-Existing Condition

<All Photos: The Reckoner>

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Here's what happens when you lose medical coverage for a decade. Study this photo, and you'll notice the reddish-orange freckles dotting my feet. However, I'm not a redhead (though I've dyed my hair that shade, now and again).

Those spots are from blood pooling in my feet, due to a condition called DVT (deep vein thrombosis). DVT occurs when a blood clot develops in the deep veins of your legs, which lead to pain and swelling, though it often occurs with no symptoms.

I got diagnosed in 2005. Like most conditions, DVT sneaked up on me. Suddenly, all those late night journeys at work -- from the layout computer, to the printer, and back again -- became exhausting. My steps felt heavy and lumbering. 

I felt spooked enough to call my sister, because she's the kind of person who reads medical journals for fun. She advised me to hit the ER immediately, where they told me what was going on.

I underwent a procedure to close the clot in my left leg, but was told it would reopen, at some point. That's simply how the procedure worked then. That's why they call them "side effects." But when that moment arrived, I couldn't capitalize, once my next job evaporated, along with my employer-paid coverage.

As I've chronicled here, I couldn't to address that issue until last summer, when I finally qualified for expanded Medicaid health coverage. Only then did I get the surgery to close the vein -- after it reopened, just as the doctor predicted. 

My surgery coincided with the Republican Party's failure to undo the Affordable Care Act, via its last-ditch option -- the so-called "skinny repeal,' or pulling the plug on the individual mandate, as we all watched that drama unfold on national TV.

During the follow-up visit, I asked the doctor: "What would have happened if I'd had to wait longer, or couldn't get this procedure done at all?"

He answered: "Well, the blood would have kept on pooling down there, so you would have definitely felt worse. You got this done at a good time."

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We've been hearing the phrase "pre-existing conditions" a lot on the campaign trail lately. On one hand, it's stupid jargon, the kind that insurance companies invented to deflect attention from their dubious practices. Whenever I hear that phrase, I'm tempted to shout: 

<"Pre-existing, 

my ass!>

<"Life is NOT

a pre-existing condition!">

<"Stick that 

in your balance sheet, 
and smoke it!">

That's hardly surprising, given the Republicans' animosity toward anyone -- aside from themselves, and their kind -- getting theirs. Wait, you say, isn't my wife entitled to care for heart disease, or diabetes?  The answer rings back, hollow and predictable as always: Sorry, kid. You're on your own. Maybe the marketplace will take pity on you.

We're not at that tipping point yet, but make no mistake -- the GOP elephant is gunning for all of us, and aiming those giant tusks aimed straight for our jugular. 

One example came in last year's attempts by the GOP-led House Of Representatives to strip the Affordable Care Act's 10 essential benefits -- like prescription drugs, for example -- from the law. I'm referring to the verbiage that insurers may not "design benefits in ways that discriminate against individuals because of their age, disability, or expected length of life."

This is crucial language, and it's no surprise that Republicans keep barreling to kill it -- as 20 states ruled by them are vying to do, via their federal suit, Texas v. the United States. The suit argues -- since the GOP-dominated Congress has killed the individual mandate, effective next year -- the law cannot stand, including those protections for pre-existing conditions.

If the U.S. Supreme Court hears the case, its newly-minted far right majority could well give their gubernatorial buddies a free pass to do throw us all back in the Dark Ages -- when people struggled to get even basic health needs covered, or  raise money, against all odds, to cover the related costs of dealing with them.

I think back to my high school days, when one of my fellow classmates, and Drama Club members -- let's call him Rob -- got diagnosed with cancer. He was a junior, and only a year behind me, which meant that he was only 17 when he heard those dreaded words, followed by the knot in his stomach.

Rob's family ended up taking him to Wisconsin, the closest place where he could get the more sophisticated treatments that his condition demanded -- once he'd exhausted all the initial care that our area had to offer. 

But, in doing so, he also exhausted his insurers' bottom lines, an event that forced out of the "decent" hospital, and into the "affordable" one (read: below average).

Rob's decline came a few months before my sister graduated from high school in June, where -- somehow, against all odds -- he took his final walk with her, and his classmates, with a surgical mask clamped around his mouth.

Of course, his hair was long gone, and he leaned on the person ahead of him for support as he went to his designated folding chair, just ahead of the track. Rob died a few weeks later. 

His mom and dad -- who'd been left destitute by their ordeal -- were now living with my high school chemistry teacher, who readily took them in (being an in-law, by marriage). Without that sense of loyalty, and blood tie, I don't know what Rob's parents would have.

I thought of Rob again this year, when I spotted an obituary for his mother. I can't imagine the heartache that dogged her life -- first, from burying her son, then outliving him by a good 30-plus years, not to mention the financial stress that turned her and her husband into virtual beggars. 

Sad and distressing as this story sounds, it was also totally commonplace. It's not a new one, either, as we know from the 1950s, when Oliver Hardy -- the bigger half of the famed comedy duo, Laurel & Hardy -- suffered a stroke that ended his working days forever, and forced him to sell his house to pay off (you guessed it) those mounting medical bills.

Imagine if the ACA and that list of 10 essential benefits had been in effect. Think of how much suffering could have been alleviated in both situations -- because the people trapped in those webs deserved so much better than the hand life dealt out them.

It's why I often feel a great deal of cold, coiled, pure hard-boiled anger -- and, though much of it is directed against the Republicans, they're not the only ones who'll feel it, even as I head off in today's midterms...first, to protest them, and then, to vote against every goddamned one of them.

As usual, I digress, but let me explain.

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Mike Braun's campaigning outfit -- an open-necked shirt, plus dark pair of casual pants -- ranks among the cutest pieces of political theater we've seen lately. From looking at him, you'd never realize that the Republican gunning for  Democrat Joe Donnelly's seat is yet another uber-millionaire, with a net worth variously pegged at roughly $33 and $95 million per year. But at least he dresses like the common man, right? Therefore, he's just like you, maaan...right?

If you buy that, then you think the Washington, D.C. swamp looks like the Sahara Desert. But that's hardly my biggest issue with Braun, whose cut 'n' paste GOP platform might well be summed up as -- hey, whatever Trump wants, I'll do. To me, the most pressing reason is a look at Braun's claims of solving the healthcare debate at his company, those pesky career politicians be damned.

What does the record actually show? In essence, as the Politco.com story details, Braun stuck his employees, 900-some of them, with hefty deductibles -- $5,000 per person, $10,000 per family -- before he covered their bills. A worker at Meyer Distributing wound up no better off than, say, his counterparts at Walmart, with all their endless copays and deductibles that chew up what little income they earned.

Anyone who treats his employees this way can hardly be expected to make a great Senator, never mind a mediocre or passable one. Yet I've seen a fair amount of commentary in print, and online, from people who complain about Donnelly's lack of progressive cred, moan about how much they hate both parties, and wish for the perfect candidate to come and sweep them off their feet. It's the political variation on that old TV battle cry: Camay, take me awaaay!

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But here's the problem with that kind of thinking, and where it gets us. Yes, I'm not keen on Donnelly bragging in his TV adverts about his readiness to side with Trump on delusions like the oft-threatened border wall. But, let's also remember: this is freakin' Indiana, the state that gave you Vice President Mike Pence. Like it or not, sometimes, it pays to tread carefully, especially in a state that Trump won by 20 points in 2016. Need I say more?

I don't live in the Hoosier State, but I'm well aware of what Donnelly has to deal with there -- so I'll give him the benefit of my doubt. What he says in a 30-second ad matters less than where he stands, and what he does, like last summer, when he proved decisive in blocking the GOP drive to kill the ACA. I don't want a creep like Braun playing that role. Need I say more?

Wait, I almost forgot, there's a third option. Lucy Brenton, that plucky Libertarian businesswoman who -- despite getting off some well-placed debate zingers -- has yet to break out of the political subsoil of support, where she hovers between 3 and 8 percent. I support third parties, but in a race this close, I also feel the "no shots" have a public duty to drop out -- as the Green Party candidate has just done, in Arizona's Senate race -- rather than play the designated spoiler. We all know how well that worked in 2000. Need I say more?

Simply put, we're living in a continual state of emergency, one that would feel far more unbearable without the energies of the anti-Trump resistance to counteract the worst effects. I, for one, am tired of people trying to elegantly rationalize their way out of the situation -- both parties suck, I hate all the ads, politics is a dirty business, yada-yada-yada -- that, if it's left to continue corroding and spreading unchecked, will eventually allow them no such luxuries. Need I say more?

The above-mentioned logic -- or lack of it -- reminds me of a statement attributed to Winston Churchill, the World War II-era British Prime Minister: "An appeaser is one who gives food to a crocodile--hoping it will eat him last."

Or, as my sister so acerbically put it a couple weeks ago, when she talked about canvassing college students who hadn't followed any of the issues, pre-existing or not: "People need to stop acting as though this is like 'The Dating Game.' You're not having them over for coffee. You just want to elect somebody that will put your own interests first, for a change."

And that's why, today, I'm off to protest, and then, to pull the Democratic lever on everything. I know that the world won't change overnight, because there's so much work left to do, even if they get one (or both) congressional majorities back. I know that I won't agree with every candidate on every issue. But now that we've spent two years under the shadow of Trump and company's darkest labors, it's time to set aside those worries, and focus on the bigger picture.

Otherwise, all those elegantly nuanced arguments, however appealing they sound, won't mean anything. I don't want to cling to a nuanced life raft -- it's not going to help me survive the frigid North Atlantic waters, once the Titanic slides down for the last time into its murky black depths. So let's proceed accordingly when we pull the lever in the voting booth, shall we?

In other words, I want to get across the finish line, and bring others along with me -- pre-existing or not. And maybe, just maybe, that'll give us the first step in taking our country back. --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,

Before You Eat That Five-Figure Deductible):

Politico.com:

"It Was Not Real Insurance":

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/05/it-was-not-real-insurance-830385