System is broken and it needs fixed

I’m disgusted at the current debate on health care reform and the lies people are using to scare others. People need to read the facts themselves and not get their information secondhand or through some e-mail saying there will be “Death Panels.”

Here are the facts in my family:

• More than 30 percent of my wife’s income goes to pay for our health insurance and into our medical spending account, and they expect health insurance costs to rise 9 percent if nothing is done to reform it. She works for the state and can expect no increase in wages this year, so we can expect to take home even less.

• We have a $5,000 deductible and one income. So we put off going to any doctor because it will reduce our medical savings account. And if we have a major illness, we won’t have money in the account to cover the bill.

• My wife is supposed to begin using a drug, but the cost would be more than $1,200 a year out of pocket for us, if the lowest dosage will work for her. The cost here is more than if we were to get it from Canada – again, another pressure on spending all our medical spending account and have nothing for a major illness.

• Family who lives in another country hesitates to visit because they can’t afford any medical care here if they should have an accident – there goes some tourism dollars.

• Almost every doctor visit, we have to fight with the insurance company to even apply it toward our deductible, even though we are the ones paying for it.

Health care is broken and needs fixed.

Do I trust the government, no; but I trust the suit and ties of corporations less. After all, people like them put profits ahead of the American people and got us into this recession.

Remember, the only responsibility of a corporation is to make profits for its shareholders, and it will do what the bankers did – whatever it takes, ethical or unethical to make that money.

Avon Waters

Converse

To have knowledge is to have power

Where do family members turn when they are faced with the problems and heartaches that come from dealing with mental illness on a daily basis?

The Alliance for the Mentally Ill Kokomo is offering a family education course, beginning Sept. 2, to help parents, spouses, siblings, friends and significant others deal with the issues of living with a loved one who has been diagnosed with one of the three mental illnesses: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression.

The free, 12-week course will be from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Morning Star Church, 2900 E. Markland Ave., Kokomo. If you are interested, call Julie at (765) 628-2021 to get enrolled.

The course was written by Dr. Joyce Burland of Vermont, with the aid of a grant from the National Institution of Mental Health.

The teachers are family members who have experienced illness in their family and been trained to pass on their hard-earned lessons. And they are anxious to share what they have learned as they realize to have knowledge is to have power. Do not miss this opportunity to help your loved one and yourself, as well.



Roberta E. Wagner

Kokomo