Health-Care Reform Could Be Obama's Toughest Challenge

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I totally agree with the above comments. I too am a cancer survivor and a heart valve replacement recipient. I am what the private insurance co's consider uninsurable. After surviving these terrible medical incidents,( for which I had no control over) I now am told I can only be insured by my husband's group policy provided by his employment. OOPS, he lost his job over a year ago and has not been able to find employment yet. Since he is a whopping 55, I don't think his applications are given first look by potential employers. What am I suppose to do? Just hope the cancer does not recur or hope I don't have any problem with the artificial heart valves? I thought that was what insurance was suppose to be for INSURANCE THAT WE HAVE INCASE OF A HEALTH PROBLEM.....I don't understand why anybody would not support a health-care reform that would give us all the right to good health care at a good and fair premium. The way we are going now is sure disaster for our future and the future of our children. Don't I deserve to live also?

Darlene of GA 2:48PM June 26, 2009

Health care reform is desperately needed. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs and with it, their health insurance. Even those who do have health insurance often find that it only 'works' as long as they pay their premiums and never, ever get sick. The moment you have a real health problem - as I did, just recently being diagnosed with early stage cancer - many people find their health insurance plan isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Insurance companies try every trick in the book to retroactively cancel your coverage ('recission'), or simply 'lose' your paperwork again and again, denying your claims, fighting you while you are at your sickest and weakest in the hope you will just give up and die. Mandating that people buy health insurance plans is no solution when health plans are worthless for actually providing the needed health care. The ordinary American simply cannot pay the kinds of costs that come from a real health problem out of pocket. The bill from my first cancer surgery is over $11,000 not to mention the additional costs that will be billed for MRI, second surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. I am relatively young, in my 40s, and I have worked hard and lived frugally but come on, how many of us can realistically have saved up hundreds of thousands of dollars in spare pocket change by this point in our lives? Americans under 65 need an affordable health care option that focuses on providing us with health care, not on seeing us as expendable sheep to be sheared for financial profiteering. We need a medicare/medicaid type of single payer plan option for the ordinary American.

D. of AR 3:15PM June 23, 2009