Page 374 of 524

Insuring Our Children’s Health


Health care is a calamity in the United States. Tens of millions of people, mostly women and children, are without the means to see a doctor for preventative medicine as well as treatment for illnesses and accidents. Why? Health insurance was irrevocably wedded to employment after WWII when the government restricted businesses ability to compensate their worker monetarily. Businesses began to use health insurance as a way to attract and keep the workers they needed. Today’s workers find themselves in a much chillier climate with health insurance being limited, dropped or not offered at all by businesses desperate to maintain healthy profits as opposed to healthy workers. Women and their children are especially hard hit by this as they are more likely to be working part time jobs or for small businesses and benefits like health insurance are not available to them. Even two income middle-class families are hard hit by the co-pays and payroll deductions for the coverage they are able to get through their employment. With medical costs sky-rocketing, people find themselves paying more and more for less and less coverage.

And then there are the catastrophes that no family expects. The catastrophic illness of a breadwinner or child. Chronic illnesses that are perfectly treatable but too expensive to do so without insurance. Terminal illnesses. Most Americans are one disastrous illness or accident away from losing everything and this is mainly due to inadequate health insurance or none at all. For these people federally funded programs like Medicaid and CHIPS were created but due to Congressional underfunding, states have to limit those who can participate. There are long waiting lists and some people are forced to quit jobs in order to qualify for these programs – a Catch 22 if ever there was one.

My late husband qualified for Medicaid – barely – due to the nature of his very rare illness, but I have to say that I wish I hadn’t had to take that assistance. I will forever feel like I failed because I couldn’t take care of him myself. Being a part of any type of government assistance program, from my perspective, is not something the majority of people seek out. I found my dealings with social workers and Medicaid frustrating and soul-crushing. I don’t know that I can ever really put into words just how damaging it was at a time when I was already going through one of the worst experiences – watching my husband die. But I would have done anything to make his last months better and I “sucked it up” and did what needed to be done. I was lucky. We qualified. Thousands of people are told every day that they don’t. They make a few hundred or thousand dollars a year too much. There are waiting lists and they must get in line. Or, the worst of all, the program has been cut due to lack of funds.

If you have a minute, check out some of the stories and articles at Moms Speak Up. Leave a comment. Tell a story. Send a quick email to your state senator or representative. We are one of the wealthiest nations in the world and we are not taking care of our children or our desperately ill. We can do better.

MarryACanadian.com


A movie I have not seen but for the trailer got me thinking about the whole “marrying a foreigner” thing which I honestly don’t give any thought to at all unless I am tangling with Immigration rules and hoops, or I use some American saying or slang that Canadians don’t know (because it really is never safe to assume that people up here are “just like us” – us Americans that is). In the film, Blue State, it is 2004 and Bush has been re-elected prompting one fervent young Democrat to make good on his threat to move north and become a Canadian. At one point in the trailer we see him perusing a website called Marry a Canadian.com because, I am assuming, he has discovered (as most people do) that it is not so easy to pick up and move to another country. Pack a bag and visit is okay, providing the FAA is not making an example of the particular airline you are traveling with that day (and you aren’t leaving from New York City as the only timely way out – or in – after a certain point in the early morning is really by car). Emigration however entails a lot of paperwork and can take months, or years, depending on your situation. Although this movie portrays marriage as the quickest route to residency and citizenship, I can assure you that it isn’t. There are rules, mountains of paperwork and documentation and a whole lotta waiting involved. And they will check to make sure you are, um, consummating on a regular basis.

Rob wondered idly after we saw the clip if anyone wonders how he met me. Anyone who doesn’t know our story that is, and who could read me and not know more than they ever wanted to about us?  We are quite open with having met on the Internet (interesting how many of us speak of cyberspace as though it were a real place), and probably not as apologetic as some would think we should be when we elaborate that our meeting site was a widowed support board.

Back in the early days of our friendship, a new friend at the YWBB and I were chatting on the phone and she enquired as to Rob’s accent. She was not assuming it was a Bob and Doug Mackenzie “hey, hoser” type of thing but French because her perspective led her to believe that most Canadians are of the French persuasion. Canadians do have an accent that is not the over-exaggerated one of the Mackenzies but is similar in a very non-cartoonish way. Most of the people I know use “eh” as their end sentence filler and have the distinct “ou” pronunciation. Canadians have their own slang, thank you very much, that is not American derived. Given the ubiquitous number of Canadian cities masquerading as American ones on U.S. television, I was surprised to note that there are subtle but still noticeable differences like traffic circles and a softer, more rounded shape to traffic lights and light poles. The Canadian post boxes are everywhere in residential neighborhoods and the concept of a freeway American style doesn’t seem to exist anywhere I have traveled and that includes the length of Saskatchewan, from Calgary to Grande Prairie in Alberta and a chunk of B.C.

One of the things I get quizzed on quite a bit is the health care system here because, unlike the States, anyone who cares to buy in can have access to health care. So right away one should notice that it is not free. There is a premium that varies according to income and is sometimes paid for by your employer, and you are correct if you are muttering that it doesn’t include the cost of prescription drugs. Medications are out of pocket for the most part though again an employer might have a prescription plan as part of one’s compensation. Speaking however as an asthmatic with allergies, I can tell you that the out-of-pocket cost for some of the medication I need is on par with just the co-pays my health insurance plan stuck me with back in Iowa. It’s odd not to have access to just run of the mill care on the weekends. Clinics just aren’t open. Many people use only clinics and haven’t any primary care physician because like everything else up here in terms of labor, there just aren’t enough doctors. Which is also why whole wings of hospitals are closed and it’s hard to get into a hospital for non-emergency things, there aren’t enough nurses either. But our little town of just a bit over 16,000 people has its own hospital when I know that rural folk in Iowa were having to drive hours to get to a hospital and in the case of an emergency, you would be treated somewhere.

Having just done taxes, I have noted differences there too. There is no such thing as filing jointly. Every adult is required to file yearly regardless of whether they worked or earned a single dime (and they do have dimes here but not dollar bills. The dollar is a coin called a “loonie”). I had to get a SIN in order to file taxes. It is similar to the U.S. Social Security number. They have two types. One is for citizens and legal residents and another for temporary workers. Wow. Differentiation. What a concept.

Canadians don’t have any idea what real consumerism looks like as I have written before. Stores close at 6PM on Saturdays and 5PM on Sundays (after only opening at noon). The shelves are often bare and strangely, to an American, sometimes stay that way. For example, during the heat wave last July, stores ran out of air conditioners. The end. There were no more shipments until probably now when they stores begin to gear up for summer again. Seriously. This happens. When stuff is gone, well it will be back next season.  Oh and Canada is devoid of Target.  Not a single one anywhere. ‘Nuff said.

I have never thought of myself in terms of place. I was born in Iowa and lived there my whole life before coming here. I had thoughts of living somewhere else before I met Rob, but I hadn’t fleshed anything out. A place is a place really and it is your human connections that make it home. Even so, I have never really missed a place once I have moved on to another one. Oddly, or maybe not, I feel more at home and connected here – to this place, Canada – than I have at any point in my life. There is a genuineness to the people I meet and a sense of perspective of time and the ground we occupy that I don’t remember from back in the States.  Not that I have developed any anti-American sentiments that I didn’t already have, but I am comfortable in my Canadian skin. Enough so that I can heartily recommend marrying a Canadian to anyone who gets the chance.

Life in the Plastic Bubble: Food allergies and Eating Out


Basically when you have food allergies, you don’t eat out. That kind of normal experience that nearly everyone takes for granted is not an option for you. Whereas food in the grocery comes with labels that are about 90% helpful in helping you avoid thing things that will make you sick, restaurants are not similarly labeled.

Friday night we tried to eat out at a new place in The Fort, a Vietnamese noodle house. Asian foods, if I am alert for peanuts, are strangely easier for me to eat. Rob was a bit dubious. He has learned (more quickly than I ironically) that dining out nearly always ends in disaster. The only safe bets include Subway, Subjoint and anyplace that serves eggs and toast any time of day. The short list of my allergies includes: peanuts, tomatoes, anything citrus, oil, butter, onions, red meat, pig, and chicken. It might not seem a long list but try to find a seasoning or sauce that doesn’t contain tomato or onion. You wouldn’t believe the number of foods that those two things alone knock off the “good foods” list. Vegetarian options are not plentiful when they exist at all and most dishes are prepared with some kind of oil and the more oil used the sicker I will be. 

When we arrived at the Noodle House, I had surprisingly high hopes. We walked in, however, and were greeted with a CASH ONLY PLEASE sign and promptly turned and left. Cash? Quaint. I was undeterred though Rob voiced suspicions of omens. We headed toward a strip mall on 99 Ave and while I hit the ATM there, Rob and Katy ran into the Shopper’s to pick up a registered letter the postlady had left him a note for earlier that day. Money and junk mail in hand we first hit the main post and then returned to the Noodle House. To make a long story a bit shorter, I will quote you Rob’s rendition of our noodle house adventures:

The Fort Noodle House was a total bust.  We returned, with our cash, and were eventually seated.  We looked at the menus; only one kids’ menu item (French fries, chicken wings, pop….wait, did that say chicken WINGS?  For KIDS?)  We looked over the rest of the selections.   There were a few vegetarian selections and we discussed a few possibilities.  But I was starting to get a bad vibe about the place.  It was filling up and it was visibly understaffed.  We decided to nip a potentially bad dining experiment experience in the bud and got up and left.

 and skip to the Chinese buffet that came after.

Normally I can eat Chinese. It’s hard to get into too much trouble with rice and veggies, but Rob had nearly filled a plate for Katy before I realized that this buffet was more Alberta than Chinese. Meat in nearly every dish and onions in the rest. And I was ready to cry. Seriously. Dining out is absolutely not on my list of fun things to do. If I am not trying to make a meal out of side dishes, I am trying to assure my fellow diners that I am really okay with not eating while they stuff themselves in my face. I am not sure which is worse sometimes. Feeling like a leper or knowing that aside from Rob, no one really has much patience with my food “issues”. People with food allergies are generally treated like closet anorexics – we just don’t like to eat or something because no one but the small children of anal retentive overparenters really has food allergies. Even the health profession tends to downplay the idea. I have been told I have an ulcer (nope), IBS (nope) or perhaps I mistook a stomach virus for something more. 

Let me tell you what happens when I eat tomatoes or citrus. I get a bumpy rash on both sides of my tongue leaving it feeling as though I have burned it, and sometimes my lips will tingle or go numb. Then I get horrible stomach pains which then travel through my digestive tract wreaking havoc. 

Yes, I know. That was TMI. But I don’t banish food from my life lightly, and I am as weary of my allergies to food being looked down on or dismissed as I am of smokers who crowd doorways and take insult when my asthma flares. I would rather be a “normal” person, but for whatever reason I am on my way to life in a plastic bubble.

Rob, though, is better than a plastic bubble. Perhaps in a way he is my bubble. When I told him I wasn’t going to be able to eat anything, he sprang into action. Grabbing a menu, he quickly found me suitable entrées and while ordering quizzed the hostess as to the types of ingredients used. Peanut Oil? MSG? Within ten minutes we were all seated and eating.

So the evening ended on a high note. Katy loves to get out and it was nice to not have to prepare an evening meal. I don’t think we will eat there again. It was, in Rob’s words a downtown skid row establishment.