Blog Post 6

 Blog written in response to the following article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/health/as-hospital-costs-soar-single-stitch-tops-500.html?_r=0

This article both interested and terrified me. I know that I am among a growing (hopefully not majority) group of people who are thoroughly confused by their own health insurance and the process of navigating the healthcare system. It always seems to go that just when I feel as though I have a handle on healthcare, the rug is pulled out from under me – sometimes in the form of a astronomical bill that I was sure would have been covered, and other times in articles or stories such as this one.

This article scared me in two different ways. First and foremost, it made me incredibly anxious about the everyday possibility of an injury. I walk up and down stairs every day, cross streets, drive in cars….and I haven’t gotten hurt in a while! It’s statistically reasonable to assume that my next accident is just around the corner (knocking on wood as I type) and with it will come substantial debt! I better be extra careful…but where will those thousands of dollars for five stitches come from? I’d rather superglue a cut together and hope for the best than land up a financial creek without a paddle. Secondly, this makes me terrified for the lower income populations in our community. So many people I come into contact with at SafePlace or in the community don’t have the time or money to go to a doctor for every ailment and pay the copays, so they wait until they are extremely sick or hurt (or just have a REALLY bad flu) and they go to the emergency room. I have known for a long time that medical costs are the #1 way people in America fall in to debt, but this article helped me to see how it hits much closer to home than I would like.