Christopher Bishop of Chapel Hill, North Carolina is a small business owner with a wife in law school. "I wanted us to purchase health insurance that was more than just emergency insurance, and we paid about $250 a month," Bishop recalls. "When my wife, Alia, started law school, we moved from Austin, Texas to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in the middle of a heat wave. I developed chest pains and called my insurance company to ask where I should go to find an in-network provider.
"Even though they're a national company, they told me that there were no providers in North Carolina. I was kept in the hospital and on an IV for three days and ended up with a bill of over $5,000. My health insurance did not cover even half of my costs, since I was out of network. We had no way of paying the bill, and are begging the hospital not to turn us over to collection agencies.
"Now we are stuck because my wife is on a couple of prescription allergy medications and if we switch providers they will not cover her prescription expenses since it would be considered a pre-existing condition. We want to get health coverage with a maternity option but that is proving very difficult to find.
"We used to live in Canada and their healthcare was great. The cost of drugs for us there was less than our co-pay here. We paid a tiny premium per month for health coverage, but we never had to wait for any treatment. We pay much more and wait significantly longer here in the United States for our care."
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Sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee
Eighty-two percent of Americans think the U.S. healthcare system should be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt (Commonwealth Fund, Aug. 7, 2008). America's nurses know that only single-payer, improved and expanded Medicare for all will fix our broken system and the tragedy of our devastated families. HR 676, by U.S. Rep John Conyers, is the most comprehensive, cost effective way to achieve guaranteed healthcare for all.
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