Oh, not because I HAVE this condition, though frankly, I feel like I would have had better chances of winning the lottery.
I have Multiple Myeloma, stage II, 'high risk.'
It's an odd duck; cancer of the bone marrow. What makes it 'high risk,' is a chromosomal abnormality that doesn't mean good news for survival.
Now I'm actually blessed with great insurance, paid by my husband's retirement; Kaiser Permanente. Because of that, I had a doctor who saw that I was slightly anemic and sent me for some 'further tests.' Those 'further tests' ended up being a LOT of tests (including a bone marrow biopsy, which I recommend to the Spanish Inquisition, or the CIA...perhaps especially the CIA, since nobody could object to the government 'taking care of the prisoner's health') The verdict was, yup, I got this thing; 75% of my bone marrow was cancerous plasma cells.
The REALLY odd thing is that most people who have this don't find out until they have broken bones, kidney failure, dementia, liver failure....it's a nasty disease. Me? My bones are fine and so are my kidneys and liver.
No cracks about my mental capacity, please.
I'm in GREAT health...except for the dying of cancer part.
This Friday I'm going in for a bone marrow transplant. I'll be in the City of Hope for two to three weeks, while they destroy my immune system and then 'reset' it, in hopes that this will put me into a good, long term remission. There's a really good chance that it will work, despite the 'high risk' thing, because they caught it before it did any damage to my bones and organs. It has been borne upon me that this is EXTREMELY rare, that someone with as an aggressive form of this condition as mine is gets caught this early. OK, I'll take that.
After all, this disease mostly affects African American men over 65. I am about as lily white a redheaded blue eyed female as you can find. Why in the world would they even LOOK for something like this?
Now, why this longwinded introduction, she asks?
I'll tell you.
In the normal course of events (pre-Obamacare) I would get the transplant, have the rest of the stem cells (that were collected from me last week) frozen and kept in reserve for another one...which I'm almost guaranteed to need, and if that doesn't work, I'd do a third, using donor cells from one of my sisters. I hope. Neither my age nor my life condition would affect this, because, well, I have Kaiser and I would transfer that to a 'Senior Advantage' Kaiser membership next August. All done. Good thing, because I'm going to be taking extremely expensive medication (as in, $2000 per pill) for the rest of my life.
If I had NOT had good insurance, the City of Hope and the pharmaceutical companies that make the novel drugs for this have all sorts of programs: once you have Multiple Myeloma, you get the care. All you have to do is get to a facility that specializes in it.
I have been told, however, and I have since confirmed this, that if Obamacare gets through as written, this will no longer be true. For one thing, there will be no possibility of a donor transplant, (which is the only hope for an outright cure) the most effective medication won't be available , and it's highly possible that I won't be offered even the second transplant using my OWN stem cells. My prognosis, thanks to Obamacare, will go from a possible ten to fifteen years down to two or three....because the decisions for my health care won't be mine or my doctor's. They will be made by committees according to guidelines, which will include the idea that no matter what, people over 70 won't get that sort of treatment.
It doesn't matter what my doctor says, or what my insurance company now pays for; the government will regulate this.
I'm OK now. Things are getting paid for.
But what about next year, when Obamacare takes me over?
Now me, I'm an example, and of course this is hitting home hard for me....but I'm hardly unique. I have been talking to a great many MM patients from all over the world, and the ones from 'universal health care' nations, like Canada, Australia and Great Britain do not do well. They are sicker and die sooner, and many of them don't even know that there are novel agents that can treat them; because THEIR healthcare won't provide them.
Those of you who know me know that I don't LIKE Obamacare. Now you know why.
So.....here's the topic for debate (and I'll participate for the next three days...). If you wanted to fix health care in this nation, how would YOU do it? Obviously Obamacare isn't going to work.
Remember: the object is to make certain that:
1. Those who need health care GET it...the best available, not just the least expensive.
2. The decisions regarding health care should be made by the patient and the doctor, not by some faceless bureaucrat looking at cost/benefit charts.
3. Nobody has to go bankrupt because of health care expenses.
4. Healthcare is delivered efficiently, with no long waiting times.
5. Health professionals get paid enough to justify the student loans, and have autonomy.
6. So do patients, in their ability to choose who provides them health care.
Obamacare does NONE of the above, btw.
Go.
