Fix Health Insurance

Fix health insurance

The story on the Babec family (Dec. 11) sounded all too familiar to me.

When Jennifer Babec described her family struggle due to the illness of a child, her husband losing his job and the stoke, the cliche of “when it rains it pours” seemed like an understatement.

The family survived, even thrived, in the end, a happy ending especially the part about the blood drives.

Each week, I hear about similar situations, where a family loses a home or files bankruptcy due to the cost of health insurance.

Some Illinoisans have realized that we should not allow insurance companies to make a profit on the misfortune of others. We shouldn’t read about families “forced onto welfare” due to the cost of health insurance. That the kind of stress a family can have when they can’t find affordable insurance is a stress we can avoid.

I can’t help but imagine that the stress of all of this somehow contributed to her husband having a stroke.

The Affordable Healthcare Act has brought some relief to families, and hopefully more will come when it is fully enacted. However we in Illinois can go further, we can consider programs like Single Payer (Vermont has been working on this since 2006).

We have state legislators that have introduced bills like H.B. 311 (Flowers D-Chicago).

We mandate auto insurance and yet we have the freedom to choose not to drive.

We don’t have that choice when it comes to our bodies or our health.

And for those that say, “Oh, we can’t have government health care,” remember single-payer is not government health care. It is a way to get health insurance coverage at an affordable cost, and you use the hospitals and doctors currently available.

Jackie Traynere

Bolingbrook