Again, Mr Romney, you are speaking from your gilded gated "every need met" world.  Allow me to introduce you to mine.

I am almost 60, an SLE patient who has no insurance coverage.  I was hospitalized in May 2011 with low platelets (~37,000 when normal is !50,000-400,000+.  I was in danger of bleeding to death internally.  I went to the county charity clinic, where I met with the most incredible incompetence.  Mostly, they just don't treat the poor patients with the same kind of respect and concern I got/get from doctors I pay.  I have retained my private rheumatologist, although I didn't go for a year, and that's why we didn't catch the platelet issue until it was so severe. 

Now I cannot take the medication that was keeping my lupus at bay because it destroys platelets.  I also cannot take aspirin or NSAIDs such as Ibuprofen for the pain in my joints.  Nor can I afford the medication I need, Ben Lysta.  Why?  It's $2000-$3000 a pop, and the first three doses are to be taken 2 weeks apart and then once a month after that.  I am still taking prednisone, which isn't really controlling my lupus, and my doctor estimates will take 5 years off my life.

I have been turned repeatedly for SSDI, despite the fact I cannot walk more than about 100', suffer from exhaustion so badly that I often require 12-14 hours of sleep, and suffer pain in my joints on a daily basis.  Right now I am taking 50 mg of Tramadol 4 times a day to get through the days. I'm not old enough for SS & Medicare, and if Congress raises the age requirement, I won't live long enough to collect.  Even if they don't, I might not live long enough to collect.

My husband has high blood pressure, and he is not covered either.  We lost our insurance when your friends the Koch brothers outsourced his job to India in 2009.  He has not found a job.  The first year, he didn't even get a nibble at anything suitable.  So he took care of my late 80s mother and me, the house and the yard, the shopping, the laundry, theerrands.  Mother died 21 November 10, and in the midst of her final days and the funeral, he got a call from a headhunter, which he missed because he was ferrying me around and sitting with my mother in ICU, and taking care of my needs.  By the time he got the message, it was too late.  

My brother is an attorney, and he has been paying all our bills, including house maintenance and some modifications for my condition, and supplying all our basic needs.  I have a computer because he believes, that since I am often housebound, I need the intellectual stimulation. We also have a television because we never go to movies unless we get free tickets.   He has also been paying for my medical care.  He is 62 and about to retire from the law.

I had a friend who died from a curable cancer in 2009.  He had no insurance, and could not pay for the ongoing treatment.  So he got a pain prescription and died a long slow death.

My cousin, who is bipolar, has a heart condition, and is in charge of her 58 year old mentally challenged sister, had a breakdown not long before their Alzheimer's patient mother died.  She had no insurance, and despite her pleas, the EMS took her to the NEAREST hospital instead of the charity one.  They said that was their policy.   She now has a $25,000 bill from that NEAREST hospital, an income under $20,000 a year, and goes to the charity clinic run by the county.  If she has a heart attack, the EMS will take her to the NEAREST hospital, where she will once again incur charges she cannot afford. The NEAREST hospital to her house is about 5 blocks away and a for-profit institution.  It's also the nearest one to my home.  So guess where the EMS would take my husband or myself if we have a medical crisis at home?

We have elected to die rather than have that happen.  If we were eligible for medical care under your plan, we would not be able to afford the premiums.  the only quote I have gotten is close to $2000 a month.  So yes, Mr Romney, people ARE dying for lack of insurance, and it is not because we have "chosen" not to be covered.  You simply do not have any concept of the realities of live for the unemployed, the disabled, the underemployed, the working poor, or anyone in the REAL middle class (which, statistically is about $30,000 to $80,000, NOT those making $150K - $500K., as you seem to think.

Look through my posts.  I invited your equally clueless wife to come viist me some montjhs ago.  I promise you, we could give an education you've never had.

If you're wondering where I've been lately, I have been outside working to bring my yard into compliance with the desires of my "neighbors."  I use this term exceedingly loosely because there is nothing truly neighborly about them.  Mind you, I wouldn't care if they went about their lives and let me go about mine.  What I object to is that they never come to see if they can help, they just cowardly tattle to the teacher (in this case the City of Houston) when I don't meet their OCD, anally retentive, control issues sense of what things could be like.  

To be honest, I don't many of them by name. What I do know is that most of them arrived in this neighborhood after I did.  When I arrived in June of 1957, most of this area was still woods, open fields, or farm land.  I heard coyotes howling at night.  there were bats swooping out of the sky to eat the mosquitoes, lightening bugs, and yes the odd rattlesnake in our yard.  What do you expect?  Immediately behind our house were acres of piney woods.  I reckon I learned to dispatch a rattler to meet his maker with a garden hoe by the time I was 6.

These people can call in anonymously and get me in trouble -- threats of liens and big bills from the city to clean up my land.  Let me make it clear.  I don't have 2 or three junked up cars sitting out front.  It's just that we had a drought last summer, which allowed bermuda grass (where the heck that came from, I have no idea) and some weeds (ditto -- I know I didn't sow 'em) that got GASP över nine inches tall!  Some weeds, not a whole yard full.  The grass was about three inches tall.  We have been battling to get the yard in shape ever since last fall when the drought and pine bark beetles took out six of the large pines which were living here when I arrived.

I cannot describe how seriously the stress of the threat, along with the hours of physical labor, has impacted my health.  I'm not supposed to be out in the sun.  So I found shaded areas where I could work.  We do not have thousands of dollars to spend on this project, so my husband and I are doing it mostly by ourselves.  My brother did provide some money to pay for tools and maintenance supplies for them, and for some temporary labor.  The latest purchase today was a 48"two man crosscut saw.  We needed this to cut up the REALLY big logs.  These are 6-8' lengths of loblolly pines, all upwards of 55 years old.  Some of them were probably in the 75-100 year old range.

What I can tell you is that every joint in my body aches, and I am so tired that I fell asleep outside several times over the last couple of days while working.  I have chopped two or three brush piles into mulch.  What looks like a huge brush pile reduces to about 1 cubic yard of mulch.  I did this with a set of pruning shears.  I have also sawn up, with a bow saw, about a dozen or so branches 3-6" in diameter.  We did find a bargain on a chipper/shredder which takes anything up to 1-1/4"diameter, so I spent a few hours feeding that as well.  Anything over 6" and under a foot in diameter gets the chainsaw.  My husband does that. Anything over a foot is gonna get the crosscut saw.

There's another solid week, two weeks of work to be done, and I'd appreciate any prayers you care to offer for the strength to keep on keeping on.  I was barely walking this morning.  I worked until the bottom dropped out of the clouds and then I came inside.  I gotta admit that I didn't get as much work done today, because I hurt so badly every time I pull the pruning shears shut to cut a limb that I have to stop and will the pain away.

I have decided a couple of things.  One, I am going to find the money to put privacy screening -- like they have on tennis courts -- around my backyard.  I have a couple to the south of me that have been calling the city on us for forty years.  Complete assholes the pair of them.  She's a nosey gossipy pretentious cow whom I have done my best to avoid since her family moved in around 1960.  He's so compulsive he went outdoors in very hot weather to mow his 1 1/2"buzz cut lawn to 1/2"one year and had a heart attack.  I don't want this for my husband.   They also violated the city's water rationing last year to keep their freaking lawn green!  I resented this because when I went to take a shower I was lucky to get water at all.  Did I call the city on them?  Noooooooo.  Nor on the other neighbors who were also violating the restrictions.  I'm not the kind of person who tattles, snitches or looks for ways to make life difficult for other people, even when they do it to me.  However, when I take all these sawn up pieces of my old friends the trees to create bed edgings, I am going to place some in this pattern facing their plate glass window: n9m.  Maybe I'll make it a recurring pattern.  They steal my Meyer lemons every year anyway.  

Behind me is another jewel of a neighbor.  He came to the fence to talk to my husband one day.  He wanted us to cut down all the yaupons that make up our back hedge "because they drop leaves in my yard."  "It sure would help me out," he says.  When my husband told me, I gave a few minutes thought to remembering what he'd done to help us out.  Since I came up empty, I let my husband's answer to them stand "Feel free to cut off the branches on your side of the fence.""  This OCD also wanted us to cut down a pine tree in OUR YARD because it dropped needles on his yard.  We offered to rake them up, but he said no, that tree was going to come down in a windstorm some day, and it should come down.  He'd pay for it.  This exchange occurred while we were cutting down the dead trees and that was one of the two living pines left.  Then he started in ragging us about the pine logs two days after they were cut.  Since he's not my boss, or my father, or anyone whose opinion about anything means a damn to me, I ignored him..  Privacy screen him out too!.

To the north, the neighbors aren't so bad.  Her grandfather was a pain in the ass when he lived there, but we made our peace with her mother, and she and her husband, while they have some annoyingly noisy dogs seem to be pretty good hearted live and let live people.  

The other thing I decided is that modern Americans are woosies that our Founding Fathers would be ashamed of.  I have a deeper appreciation of those brave souls who entered the deep woods, swamps, and such over Carolina, Virginia, Georgia way and hacked down all those trees by hand and made them into log cabins, tool sheds, barns and the like.  It's damned hard work!  And I didn't have to take down the 90' trees by hand either!   I'm trying to imagine what would have happened in 1730 if someone had called all his neighbors together and said "Let's implement something called deed restrictions that mandate everyone having a St. Augustine lawn in front of their cabin, and not letting any weeds get over 9" tall on their land nor having any undergrowth over 9"tall.  Oh and no dead, decaying vegetable matter such as leaves or pine needles or fallen twigs."    I swear I hear laughter and calls for commitment to the state asylum for the insane!

On the bright side, I got to watch a number of lovely songbirds flitting about my trees in my little glade on my NW corner.  Lizards, skinks, anoles, and even a bunny live in my overgrown area.  Not a pet rabbit, but a wild one.  I haven't seen much of him while I've been working ;  I think he's afraid of us.  My husband put out some rabbit food for him though.  Sadly, my bees have departed, probably as a result of the heavy spring rains.  I have a clematis virginia, known also as Virgin's Bower Flower on my north gate, in full, luscious bloom.

I've also made a couple of vine birdhouses when I take a break.  One-and-a-half really, but I'll get it finished.  Now I have to get in bed before I fall apart. 

I just spent $471 on a doctor's office visit & lab work.  Before the month is out, I will spend another $460, and that doesn't include $50 worth of prescriptions.  Prescriptions which don't control the lupus any more.  I don't even see a family practice Dr any more ($120 per office visit) nor see the eye doctor every 6 months as I should because one of my meds (Hydroxychloroquine) can cause deposits in my eyes.  I need new glasses too, but am doing with reading glasses from Big Lots (3 pr/$5).  I haven't had a pap smear in years.  Nor have I had a colonoscopy, as I should have. I haven't been to the dentist in over three years.  I've quit testing my blood sugar on a daily basis because (a) I simply cannot afford the test strips any more,and (b) the prednisone I take raises blood sugar levels such that I feel it is futile to try to control it.

The good news is that the $460 more that I will spend will cover a panel of 6 blood tests that serve as a substitute for the $2000-7000+ liver biopsy I have been putting off until my platelet count got high enough not to risk bleeding to death, and six other tests, including an electrocardiogram.  On lab quoted me $378 for the blood tests.   The second quoted me $341.  What I figured out is that if I get some of them from the first lab, and some of them from the second lab, they will total $311..  The other panel of 6 ultrasound tests is $149.

Last week 6 July)  my local paper had an article about Texas's report on health care, I posted the results.  Allow me to repeat it here for those who missed it.

     Todays Houston Chronicle': Federal Report ranks state worst in nation for services provided The headline? TEXAS 
     HEALTH CARE BASHED. World ranked medical center and weak or very weak on 9 of 12 health care delivery 
     categories. Of course part of that is that we have the nation's highest uninsured populace -- 25% VERY WEAK on 
     home health care for elderly & disabled who live at home, for diabetes care
     BEST SCORE (average) on mortality & potentially avoidable complications of PRIVATELY INSURED PERSONS
     BELOW AVERAGE on those for uninsured & those covered by Medicare & Medicaid 
     DEAD LAST on caring for breast cancer patients under 70
     Rick Perry's press secretary's response? "Texas will continue to fight the federal government for more flexibility to 
     meet our health care challenges, which is crucial to effectively improving our health care system." 

Today's paper (9 July) offers this:  Fewer Texas doctors taking poor patients  
     -- Doctors accepting new patients on Medicaid has dropped from 67% in 2000 to 42% in 2010 to 31% this year.  This is 
         due to the Texas Medicaid program reimbursing the doctors at low rates.
    -- 27% of Texas patients lack insurance, making Texas last in the nation in % insured.
    -- For Medicare, the % of Drs accepting new patients relying solely on it went from 78%in 2000 to 66% in 2010 to 58% 
        this year. The federally managed Medicare pays better than Medicaid, administered by the state.  This time the drop 
        is attributed to onerous Paperwork.
   -- only 46% now accept poor children covered by CHIP
   -- Texas medical students leave to take up residencies elsewhere because the state doesn't fund enough positions.
   -- The number of primary care physicians in Texas is 72/1000,000 in urban areas, and 52 per 100,000 in rural areas.  
        Thr national average is 128/100,000.  On the other hand the number of obstetricians has grown.  Many doctors are
       slated to retire over the next 10 years.


Check out these news announcements and stories.  Pay attention to the TIMING.
Aug 26, 2009 ... HOUSTON – Gov. Rick Perry today highlighted Texas' efforts to combat the state nursing shortage by further investing in nursing education.

Jul 14, 2010 ... Texas is facing a shortage of 71000 nurses by 2020 as demand continues to outpace supply, the Texas Department of State Health Services ...

Jul 13, 2010 ... The state is facing a shortage of 71000 nurses by 2020 as demand continues to outpace supply, the Texas Department of State Health Services ...

Fall of 2010  ELECTION IN WHICH PERRY IS RE-ELECTED
Aug 29, 2011 ... Day 29: The state has dramatically reduced support for nursing education, meaning Texas will continue to face a critical shortage of registered ... 

Mar 30, 2012 ... In response to mounting concern about Texas' nurse shortage, the Texas Legislature created TheTexas Center for Nursing Workforce Studies ... 

This is the best medical system in the world?  

If you have been reading my blog, or any of my pages, or my Facebook page, you know that I have SLE (Systemic Lupus Erythmatosis).   What you may not realize is that this is primarily "a woman's disease," as 90% of the patients are women.  Most of them are 15 -45, the childbearing years.  For some enlightening information about pregnancy and lupus, please read this study in Japan about pregnancy outcomes and lupus  .

Women of color, across the board have higher rates than white women.  I once had a former Texas benefits evaluator tell me that "lupus is a made up disease by people who are too lazy to work."  To me, it was clear he was referring to Black women.  Black women have higher death rates from breast and cervical cancer, higher rates of STD's and teen pregnancies, higher infant mortanlity.  SOURCE:  Debunking the myth.  Black women, Hispanic women, Native American women all have higher rates of lupus.  Black women have more severe outcomes more often.  Poor women without health insurance have a harder time getting the help they need to treat lupus.  SOURCE:  Lupus Fact sheet

For some information about lupus symptoms in general, please read this article about two lupus patients.  

My diagnosis was originally made by a gynecologist to whom I had gone for a simple pap smear.  At the time, I had health insurance.  I no longer have health insurance, and my best option for pap smears is Planned Parenthood.  Read one woman's story about not affording to go anywhere but Planned Parenthood.    

Please make yourself aware of two FACTS:
1.  NOT ONE TAXPAYER DOLLAR GOES TO ABORTION.  That has been prohibited since the 1970s.
2.  Abortions are only 3% of their services  FACT SHEET HERE

Finally, let's talk about SOCIAL SECURITY and Disability and Social Security Supplemental Income.  I worked from age 15 until about 40.  I've been fighting to get SSDI so I can get Medicare to cover my lupus medications.  First they told me I ought to be able to work (in 1995) because I am educated.  Know many employers who want employees who fall asleep on the job, or who miss work frequently because they cannot drag themselves out of bed and stay awake long enough to bathe, dress, and get to work?  Or who catch the flu and the miss weeks because the immunosuppressant drugs they take for lupus don't fight the flu well and leave them with bronchitism pneumonia and a lupus flare in which their joints swell and cause agonizing pain?  If so, please send those employers my way!  I'd love to work, use my brain again for pay.  Of course, it has to be low stress and pretty free of deadlines, because stress makes my lupus worse, and I never know which day I'm going to wake up and be unable to stay awake -- which makes it difficult to meet those deadlines.  See this blog for another person's perspective.

The next time I applied for SSI/SSDI  they told me my $3000+ savings account made me ineligible for  SSI and I no longer had enough qualifying quarters for SSDI.  I appealled and they told me I wasn't disabled!  NOIT DISABLED?  I cannot shop without either my husband pushing me in the wheelchair or an electric cart.  Some days my knees hurt so badly the 8' from my bed to the toilet  has me in tears.    I cannot stand in lines for more than 30 seconds without the knees and hips begging me to sit down. That's not disabled?

Now their story is that we cannot prove I was disabled WHILE I STILL HAD ENOUGH QUALIFYING QUARTERS.  THEY have the 1995 records with the doctors names, but OOPS  I can no longer get those records because the doctors who made the disagnosis, and who treated me, destroyed the records 10 years after my last visit.  I'm SURE those records are in the SS records;  they just demand that I produce them, knowing I can't.  

So now I'm still 5 years too young for SS and Medicare.  What if they raise the retirement age?  First how will we tap into our retirement accounts without penalty to pay for medical expenses?  I will NEVER see my SS money that I paid into the system all those years I worked (sometimes at 2-3 jobs at a time!).  I WILL NOT LIVE LONG ENOUGH!

Let me repeat that  I WILL NOT LIVE LONG ENOUGH!  I can no longer take Methotrexate because my platelet levels drop too low and I am in danger of bleeding to death internally.  The prednisone I have been on for over a year now will, according to my rheumatologist "take five years off your life."  It also induced Type II diabetes, which is implicated in heart disease, even if I didn't have the extra clotting factor from lupus.   The Hydorxychloroquine (Plaquanil) no longer controls the disease by itself.  I also cannot take aspirin, NSAIDs like ibuprofen.  So I take ginger and turmeric for the constant pain.  Some days it works, some days it doesn't work so well.  I need Ben Lysta, according to my rheumatologist, but she's not going to administer it.  It's about $2000-$3000 a pop.  I think it's once a month.  I tried to get onto a drug trial, but the diagnoses (both of which I think are wrong) the county hospital gave me of non-alcoholic cirrhosis and heart failure keep me out of the trial.  I need a liver biopsy to rule out the cirrhosis, and an echocarcdogram for the heart failure.

My only hope is Obama's health care plan, because I could not be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.  If I cannot afford the private health insurance or the high risk pool insurance, I could, as I understand it, get Medicare without having to be on SS, SSI, or SSDI.  So think twice before you pull the lever for someone who wants to repeal Obamacare;  that lever pull will be a death sentence for me and many others with my illness or others like it.  Of course, it you want to be a good, compassionate Christian, you can send me money at PayPal to help with my medical expenses. Leave a comment on this website and I'll send you my email.  They are. or would, if I were seeing the doctors I need to see and taking the meds I need to take run from $3000 in a good year for routine meds and visits and tests to upwards of $24,000 if I had to be hospitalized.  My brother is currently supporting us and paying our medical expenses.  He's nearing retirement age.  He spent years paying for our mother's needs because her SS didn't cover the utilities, food, out of pocket medical expenses.  Now he has us, and his own family.