My friend's husband has a rare form of lung cancer. He has never smoked. He is a vegetarian. They are self-employed, with two young sons. Like many entrepreneurs, they make too much money to qualify for state health care and not enough to buy their own. Then of course, there are the pre-existing conditions.
So what about the so-called "Affordable Health Care Act"? Out of funding for the Pre-existing Conditions Program. What about providing treatment and working out payments? Nope. The chemo provider won't start chemo unless my friend can come up with nearly $10,000 up front. Yeah, got that layin' around after paying for the surgery to remove the tumor and the hospital stay and the biopsy. Right. What about other programs? Other states? Other countries? If only there was a sure answer.
We have been praying for my friend and her family ever since we found out about the cancer. Right now, though, my friend just needs moral support. I hear out her fears. Then she talks about escape. Selling off everything and packing the family into an RV and full-timing it with whatever time her husband has left. I go with it, for this is the very thing I am about to do with my own family. We dream this dream for a few minutes, until my friend has to take another phone call. I have to take my son to his baseball game.
The injustice of my friend's situation burns in my heart. I want to lash out, but where? I want to help, but how? I pray. I listen. I reach out to my friend, wishing I could fix it, knowing I can't. This is one of the problems that offensive Health Care Reform Act was supposed to fix. It hasn't. What now?
