I paid into Social Security for over 15 years and I have been collecting Social Security Disability and Medicare benefits for over 10 years. I don't need a CPA degree to do the math and show that I have cost this government more monetarily than I have given this government monitarily.
In my defense, I was a great staff RN in the ICU, a great Manager, and a conflicted Hospital Administrator. I was clear and focused as a Critical Care Nurse, I was empathetic and kind as a Manager, I was ethically and morally conflicted as a Hospital Administrator. I ended my professional career with a descent into sickness, decay, and have been staving-off death often unconciously because other people knew how to keep me alive when my body failed me.
I paid into Social Security for over 15 years and then I was devastated by mixed-connective tissue autoimmune disease. Almosst concurrent with my physical decline and subsequent diagnosis and treatment, I spoke before Congress on autoimmune diseases in 1994 and I had an opportunity to meet some of the great scientists at work on this issue as well as some of the administrators of the NIH and the Human Genome Project.
With my fragile health, I worked on disability legislation and learned how to organize, lobby effectively, work with the House and Senate Parlementarians to pass legislation. I did this all pro bono, using my sparse resources.
So I never felt that I was a burden on society. I was giving back as much, if not more than I was being given.
That changed with last year's hospitalization. I spent the better part of last year and the first two months of this year in hospitals, in ICU's, on ventilators, being 'coded', in re-hab. I was generally unaware of what was going on because I was on Morphine 5-10mg q 2 hrs which did not work so I was also placed on Dilaudid 2mg q 2 hrs intravenously: I was getting pain medication every hour. I had developed a high-tolerance to narcotics because I had been on oxycontin and hydrocodone orally for over a decade. When I was awake, the restraints to keep me from pulling out my tubes, the ventilator intubation, IV's, central lines, PICC lines, were removed until the pain meds kicked back in. I was always either asleep from the narcotics or awake in excruciating pain.
My care was very costly.
Medicare informed my family that I had used up my lifetime medical reserve from Medicare. Medicare would no longer pay for my care. My family was distraught. I was in our family's hospital, Advocate Lutheran General in Park Ridge, IL. They continued to provide me with excellent care even though I had no insurance and no Medicare to pay for my care. I was transferred to the world-class RIC, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. I was in the same room as was once occupied by the film critic Roger Ebert. Ironically, as a young nurse, some friends hooked me up for a date with Roger Ebert, and we two couples: Roger & me, Patrick & Mariel, went to the Jade Cafe (now an Italian restaurant called O'Fame) on Webster near Halsted.
Upon discharge from rehab, I went home with a full complement of home-health care. I have RN's, bathing aides, dressing aides, phlebotomists, lab-couriers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, coming to take care of me during the day.
Medicare says they won't pay anymore money for me.
So, the care has to be paid for by someone. After consulting with my Congressman's constituent services staff and the hospitals lawyers, I sadly had to apply for Medicaid which is the State's program for indigents.
Indigent. I was poor. I had used up everything and now I had nothing. I had made as much as $75/hr in Critical Care in Transplants, Open Heart, Trauma, because I knew alot, taught ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support) to physicians, managed patients on IABP and ECMO (extra-corporeal heart support while patients were waiting for a donor heart). Now, I was not able to earn a penny.
Having seen the health profession from the frontlines (the ICU's) and climbing the ladder up through the glass-ceiling to become a Hospital Administrator, I had experience in looking at the many facets/pros & cons of keeping me alive.
I have come to the conclusion that I don't really know if it was worth it. Clearly the soldiers in nursing - the staff RNs and their support services, and the doctors did their job too. This system kept me alive because the people providing with medical care kept me alive without questioning whether or not my life was worth saving.
Now, Medicare and Congress will make that decision: do I live or do I die the next hospitalization. This country is financially broke. Congress is ethically and often morally broken. Medicare is wanting to spread the healthcare around more equitably and not spend massive amounts on poor-protoplasm (people like me) who are critically ill in the very costly ICU's.
It is a huge question. Who shall live and who shall die because of the finacial cost.
When I spoke to Congress, they not only learned from me, I learned alot about the problem of autoimmunity. Approximately 20% of the world's population has the genetic trait (that can be genetically tested for) that causes autoimmune disease - believed to be an autosomal-recessive gene that does not express itself in everyone but is genetically transmitted and lurking,
Through the grapevine in DC, I was informed that the Bush clan is rife with autoimmune trait. Hence the elder President Bush's work on the original ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). It is a huge national and international problem. Why does someone with the gene develop this-or-that autoimmune disease and why do some escape without any visible disease but pass the genetic trait to their offspring.
Damn, it's not just me. It's approximately 20% of the population.
How many people really consume healthcare resources at the level that I consume them?
One week alone, my lab work was an astronomical $25,000(TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS). The average, if I lop off this astronomical 25k in my calculations, is $15,000/wk for lab work. Then the overhead for the room-rate, special equipment like the Swedish robot that stood me up for the first time and helped me walk - a separate expense, the doctors, the meds, the therapists, the psychological support, etc, all ran up a huge bill.
I used up my Medicare lifetime reserve and Medicare wanted me out of hospitals. Damn, I and others like me may be the reason the country is financially broke.