The US Healthcare System: It fucking hates poor people

 Michelle Elias Flores 

I pledge my honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System. 

Nobody truly understands the true cost of how much it costs to be “sick.” You have the obvious, hospital bills and copays and how much you pay into insurance–but what about those days you work? If you have a job with sick pay, you still get paid but what about the majority of low income people who don’t get that luxury and live paycheck to paycheck? Sure, most people will argue that they get the poor people insurance and take taxpayers money–but it's poor peoples insurance for a reason.

 Personally, I am poor people–I get the state's health insurance and I have a very limited list of providers that accept my insurance and even then more limited spots in waiting times to see doctors. Horizon NJ health, don’t get me wrong–very grateful to have health insurance again but gosh it is hard to be poor and ill. I had to travel 40 minutes away to see a gynecologist that would take my insurance so I did not have to wait until March to get seen–I have a cyst the size of a baseball and I can’t imagine having to wait longer for care that matters. Oh, and I actually lost the health insurance I had while this all unraveled because my mom finally got a job that made her too much money–for the record, she does INSTACART for a couple hours while my sister is at track practice to help pay for things we covered when my aunt passed away last month. That was enough to take away my health insurance for three months until I called approximately 14 times to try to appeal to get it back. 

According to the ASPE (Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation) , there are over 40 million Acmericans who are covered under the ACA yet there's so many politicians who want to remove it or “make it better and less expensive” like we talked about last class, we spend so much money on people within the HealthCare sector which comes out to almost 13k per person according to Health System Trackers. Now to be completely transparent, I do not really understand business well at all. Trump, according to Politifact.com, wanted to remove the ACA back within his first campaign back in 2016 but has since changed his stance and wants to make it “cheaper and better.” However, as someone who does directly benefit from the ACA, what does that mean for me? Cheaper as in making the requirements harder for people to obtain coverage?

  So, why do I care about all this and have such a hard time figuring out where my thoughts lie about our healthcare system. Am I very fortunate that I got my coverage again from the state and my parents don’t have to pay $500 a month each for me and my sister to get coverage, yes I am so grateful for programs like ACA and NJ Get Covered.  Am I upset though when we do receive coverage and try to find providers there are less and less that are continuing to provide health insurance to more “government” insurances and making increased wait times, yes I am. I have personally had to LEAVE Hoboken to go to a dentist that WOULD take my insurance and try to fit me into their schedule for my wisdom teeth removal that was AFFECTING MY EYESIGHT! I’m not sure how much more familiar people are once you get closer to the heights and a lot more of the lower income parts of Jersey City, but you see a completely different world of people and services offered at places that take Medicaid. Don’t take this the wrong way though, these people are awesome and really have provided me amazing service. I just know though some people don’t unfortunately have the same experience I do with doctors. There just should not be loopholes to find this. 

I can already picture someone's heads rolling–well if you get subsidized costs for the insurance but I pay a ton, why wouldn’t I be allowed to see better doctors? You would be right! You totally deserve better care because you paid for it, but it does not justify any more limited care that I would receive and a lot more monopoly over the private market.
As I was writing this paper I kept thinking of ways I would be able to tie in the gene whiz science articles and how life really works and honestly it helps me explain my frustrations with healthcare. Progress within the science community is super inflated like we talked about last class–we’re really limited to our explanations of why things are, since ultimately genes are really hard to nail down. Medicine is really hard to pinpoint why certain things happen to your body. You constantly go to doctors appointments to try to figure out what is wrong and why it's happening–but what happens to people who don’t have enough time to go to the doctors constantly due to work? Screw them I guess, they need to work to make money to afford their doctors appointments but need to take off work to go to said appointments.
Ultimately, I think this post was a good dump of my rollercoaster of unresolved feelings with our healthcare system. I think people deserve good coverage and that the Affordable Care Act has helped literally over 40 million people and I cannot imagine literally having the heart to tell someone “I actually voted against it because why do you deserve affordable healthcare if you are poor.” However, like everything that happens that affects care for people differently such as socioeconomic status, ability to go to appointments and other things really make people unable to afford to miss work.

Sources 

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/jun/03/joe-biden/does-trump-want-to-repeal-the-aca-as-biden-says-tr/#sources

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/

https://nautil.us/how-life-really-works-435813/

https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/gene-whiz-science-is-dead-yay

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