Wampum

The costs of MB's several hospitalizations at MaineMed for hyperemesis and preterm labor, as well as Kezzie's birth at the same facility was covered by MaineCare. After the boys' diagnosis, their medical costs were all picked up by Medicare, which is MaineCare. Under Maine's wicked enlightened policy, the work of Michael Brennan, Chellie Pingree, and Mark Lawrence, the siblings of children with profound disabilities were also covered.

Further, the parents of children with profound disabilities, who's lives are defined by non-normal pediatric schedules, intensive interventions in hospital, speech therapy sessions, occupational therapy sessions, clinical schools, repeated for each sibling with a disability, plus the normal round of pre-schools and play dates and schools and normal pediatric schedules for siblings without disabilities, "work" and commute time and cost, are not, under MaineCare, courtesy of Brennan, Pingree, Lawrence, not required for the health care coverage of adults who's children are covered by MaineCare.

The costs of Sam's birth, our first of three at MaineMed, were covered by not just one, but two private, employer-provided, insurance scams -- Etna and United Health Care. Nine years later and there is still an O(10⁴) bill from MaineMed marked "unpaid" on our credit report, as Etna and UHC echo "declined, covered by other" to MaineMed's accounts payable, and will probably do so for as long as MaineMed tries to get paid by either of those two criminal enterprises.

Anyway, here are the money quotes from Ethan's second-hand message-as-endorsement:

Sure, there are programs designed to help people without private insurance from an employer -- MaineCare for example -- however, so much time is lost waiting for these programs to kick in that progress toward wellness is lost and suffering is inevitable -- let alone the red tape and confusion when people are trying to navigate these programs. There has got to be another way.

I do not know the ultimate answer to this dilemma, but I do know where the system fails us, and there must be ways that we can work to patch the system -- until we come up with a better solution. (That is why I am leaning towards Hillary for '08. She has some solutions that are implementable, not just ideals that are too good to be true).

I have to say I don't recall "time lost waiting" for MaineCare, but the allusion to "why Canada sucks" is unimportant. There are Dems in the primary voting demographic, which has an average age of 60, who will buy Ethan's substance-free message. Ethan came to Maine triangulating his way towards the Hill, and he didn't waste his time at Augusta doing useful work to make health care a human right. Nope. He was working a TABOR "compromise" with the Republicans.

Now that I'm working again, Sam and Jonah are no longer eligible for MaineCare, so I have to explore the wornderland of Ethan's preference -- private insurance, with realistic fixes, for children with a pre-existing condition -- autism. Its funny, like being offered a non-filtered cigarette "for health reasons" by the leader of the firing squad, or a low-carb last meal before leaving Death Row.