Broke, blind and trying to survive
The following story appeared in the St. Petersburg Times:
Monique Zimmerman-Stein and her husband, Gary Stein, have Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance through Stein’s job at the Hillsborough County Health Department. They pay $90 a week for coverage. But the insurance isn’t nearly enough.
Monique tries to picture what her girls must look like now that they’re 10 and 13. She hasn’t been able to see their faces in two years. Her days are long and dark and quiet
“I know I won’t ever see again. I’m not even asking for that,” Zimmerman-Stein said. “I just don’t think we should have to deal with constantly being harassed.”
Monique is 48. She and her two youngest daughters have Stickler’s syndrome [Wikipedia], a rare genetic disorder that causes joints to dissolve and retinas to detach. Monique lost her right eye at 16 and now sees only enough light through her left eye to tell night from day. She and her children are constantly in and out of doctors’ offices.
Aliyah, 10, almost died at birth and needed a tracheotomy for six years. Dava, 13, has arthritis in her spine and lost the sight in her left eye.
Insurance has been invaluable, said Gary Stein, 52. But it covers only 80 percent of most bills. The family is left to foot the balance.
The coverage would be adequate if they had only minor medical concerns, but their conditions require expensive tests, treatments and medications. In the last decade, they have racked up a half-million dollars in bills not covered by insurance.
They took out a second mortgage on their house (they later lost it to foreclosure and now rent). They sold furniture and cashed in life insurance, got their creditors to forgive some debt. Monique’s brother gave them $50,000, all he could afford.
Next to the sofa, a canvas bag from Disney World bulges with unopened statements from Florida Pediatrics, Tampa Bay Emergency Physicians, the Mayo Clinic. On the envelopes, red letters scream, “Delinquency Notice” and “Past due.”
They still owe at least $20,000, maybe 10 times that much, in medical bills. They don’t really know. Stein stopped opening the envelopes months ago.
In his Sept. 9 address to Congress, President Barack Obama urged lawmakers to set a limit on the amount of money anyone would have to pay out of pocket for health care. Patients would have a lifetime maximum they were responsible for, the way many insurance companies have a limit on what they will cover.
“In the United States of America,” Obama said, “no one should go broke because they get sick.”
But for Monique and her family, going broke isn’t the worst of it.
Recently, She made a decision.
She will no longer get treatment to preserve that last slice of light. The injections that might help cost $380 after insurance, and she needs one every six weeks. She could be spending that money on her daughters’ care.
If forgoing treatment might help them see, she said, “That’s a choice any mom would make.”
No one should have to make such sacrifices, said her husband. He hopes the new health plan will include a public option and won’t exclude people with pre-existing conditions — like his wife and daughters.
At least, he said, the government needs to cap out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Stein brings home $1,500 every two weeks, half of which is supposed to cover the rent. But most goes to doctor visits for his daughters.
The girls’ school clothes came from Goodwill this year. Zimmerman-Stein borrowed money to buy them backpacks.
Things are so tight, she and her husband fight over every expenditure: How can we keep paying for cat food? How dare someone let a lemon rot in the refrigerator!
For the first time, after 28 years of marriage, they need counseling.
But they can’t afford the co-pay.
Every afternoon about 4, Monique feels her way to the front door. She wishes she could meet her daughters at the bus stop, like other moms. But even with her red-tipped cane, she’s afraid to walk there alone. What if she missed a curb or embarrassed them?
So she stands in silence on the porch, listening for their footfalls, anticipating their laughter. She asks her girls about school, friends and homework, and about what they want to help her make for dinner.
She doesn’t ask about the mail anymore. She knows they bring it in and drop stacks of bills into the Disney bag so their dad doesn’t have to see them. She knows they hear mom and dad fighting, see mom crying.
One day last week, Monique’s face was splotchy when her daughters got home.
Her phone hadn’t stopped ringing all day.
Dava, who’s in seventh grade, dropped her backpack and led her mom to a chair. She rubbed her mom’s shoulders and promised, “It’s going to be okay,” but Monique couldn’t imagine how.
The St. Petersburg Times story found its way to the Huffington Post. A fundraiser ensued spurred by Huffington Post readers. Over 700 people donated $20,000 in less than 24 hours for the Stein family.
The Stein story illustrates the problem addressed in the health care/insurance reform effort and the need for a single-payer public option. Why the members of Congress that refuse to consider the single-payer option perplexes me. To me it appears they have accepted so much money from the health insurance industry they cannot, now, find a way to get control of the health care system out from under the health insurance industry. Plus, some of them feel, both Democrats and Republicans, their constituents back in their states will kick them out of office at their next election.
But what is right is right. The federal government has spent billions of dollars to bail out banks, car makers, and the like. But what about all those people that find themselves trapped in the same dilemma as the Steins. The Steins have no option. Except the generosity of other people.
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