Caught In a Health Care Bind

By: States: Texas | Source: AARP.org |

Diane Martinez has spent more than a decade struggling to navigate—and afford—the healthcare system in El Paso, first on behalf of her parents and now for herself.

In the early 1990s, her parents’ health declined, and caring for them became a full-time job. Diane spent as many as three or four days each week in doctors’ offices. The family’s bookkeeping business suffered.

“I was not as available to attend to my clients as I should have been,” she said. “So I lost a few, and unfortunately they were some of my bigger clients.”

For five years, Diane cared for her mother as she struggled with complications from diabetes, including renal failure, and went on dialysis. After her mother’s death, Diane inherited a substantial debt which forced her to mortgage her house. To help out, her daughter and son-in-law moved in with her.

But Diane still struggles to pay her bills each month.

“If the mortgage payment wasn’t there, I probably would not struggle as hard. But I still would not be able to afford $350 or more in health insurance a month.”
 
Diane has no private health insurance and is not yet old enough to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid. This became a problem when she began having trouble with her vision in 2004.

“I went to my regular optometrist… he examined me and his exact words to me were ‘My gosh! …How did I miss that?’” said Diane.

She had a “huge” cataract in her right eye and a smaller one in her left. The surgery cost $10,000.

Diane went to the county hospital but was turned away because she owned her home. She was denied state assistance because she wasn’t legally blind in both eyes. Diane finally found help in a grant from the Knights Templar and had surgery in summer 2005.

Many Americans have stories like Diane’s. Almost 47 million Americans don’t have health insurance. Millions more have inadequate coverage.

Last summer, AARP helped form the Divided We Fail, a non-partisan effort to engage the American people, businesses, non-profit organizations and elected officials in finding bi-partisan solutions to ensure affordable, quality health care and long-term financial security—for all of us. With this effort, hopefully we’ll devise a solution for people like Diane, who is living proof that these problems are pressing concerns.

“I am one of those people who fall ‘between the cracks’ financially and, as it is, without the help of my daughter, I really don't know where I'd be.”

“If I could afford some kind of health care, perhaps I could do ‘preventative’ medicine which would lower the overall cost of my health care in the long run,” Diane said. “As things stand now, by the time I qualify for any kind of health care, I can see that it could very well be too late for me.”

Find more information about Divided We Fail online at http://www.dividedwefail.org.