Obama Care

by Jason Scimitar

13

  Bob Wheeling had been scrimping to make ends meet. It was always difficult, but what happened today made it even worse. He had been told that his company was establishing a new policy that no one could work more than 29 hours per week due to changed United States health insurance laws which made it prohibitive to employ people longer than that. In addition, there would be no medical benefits provided to employees on account of other Obama Care regulations. The company apologized for any inconvenience, and it said that anyone needing to resign could check with the human resources office.

  At home, Ginny knew something was wrong just by looking into her husband’s eyes. “What is it, Bob? I can see something has upset you. Let’s sit down and discuss it together and get it off your chest.” She knew Bob was a good man, and she loved him dearly. He had sired her three children, Mildred, Robert Junior, and Phyllis. They were twelve, fourteen, and fifteen respectively, and they could not ask for a finer family of kids.

  “My work is being cut back and medical insurance is being done away with next month,” Bob said. “It’s a new policy companywide.”

  “Why?”

  “They aren’t making money, Ginny. That’s why. Also, its the new Obama Care medical insurance. The company won’t have the money to pay for it, so all they can do is limit us to twenty-nine hours or less. All overtime is also forbidden, because it would give us more than the twenty-nine hours that would force the company to pay medical insurance for us.”

  “Oh, my God, Bob. We can’t pay our bills as it is, and Phyllis has a heart murmur. We’ll never be insured.”

  “Lacy at Human Resources told me that we could be insured. The new law makes insurance companies take everyone including those with previous medical conditions like the one that Phyllis has. However, there’s one catch.”

  “There’s always one catch. What is this one, Bob?”

  “It would cost seven hundred and eight-three dollars each month for the insurance. With my cut in wages that would come to over one thousand dollars a month in lost income for us.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. But we will survive somehow.”

  “I’ll get a second job.”

  “That’s right. I’ll get a job also. We’ll make it.”

  After three months, Ginny had a job at the grocery store as a cashier. She worked four hours per day at eight dollars and fifty cents an hour. Every month, she was earning two hundred and twenty dollars. However, the government was taking thirty-seven dollars back for itself, leaving her with one hundred and eighty-three dollars take home pay. That barely made up for Bob’s pay cut and left nothing for health insurance.

  Soon, the bills were piling up. Ginny got more work at the grocery store giving her an extra one hundred dollars a month which brought in two hundred and fifty-seven dollars after taxes. It was still not enough.

  By the end of the year, their house was in the hands of the bank, and the family was out on the street. At first, they slept in their car and used restrooms to wash up. The children hid their family situation from teachers and friends out of embarrassment.

  The place they slept was in a small portion of woods just outside of town. It was on property that was owned by their family. Bob had gotten several camping tents so that the girls could use one and the boy another to keep them separated. Bob and Ginny slept in a third tent. Eventually, Bob rigged up a shower using buckets that could be placed in the sunlight, then used for their warm water. All in all it wasn’t too bad.

  “It’s a little like homesteading,” Bob told Ginny and his kids. “It’s tough, but it’s not something our nation’s ancestors didn’t have to put up with. Plenty of Sooners out in Oklahoma did it. So did Daniel Boone and a million others like him. I see it as a history lesson to us.”

  “Yea, one that I’ll never forget, right dad?” Robert Junior asked.

  “Well, yes. Right, son. But we still have our family. We can be proud of that. We are going to stick together through thick and thin,” Bob said.

  Ginny turned around to hide the tears of remorse that streamed from her eyes. She didn’t want the children to see her like this. She had to be strong, so she wiped away her tears, and turned to the family and said, “Your father is a good man. Always remember that. But the country is in bad shape, and his company went through hard times. It’s not his fault, and it’s not ours. And we are not alone.”

  A few months later one of Ginny’s uncles acquired a trailer for them to live it. He had it hauled to his small retirement farm. They all pitched in to restore it to a livable condition. They replaced the floors and parts of the walls and Bob fixed the refrigerator and stove. It was box fourteen feet wide and sixty feet long, but it gave them three bedrooms which were enough for privacy for everyone provided the two girls roomed together.

  14

  Ralph Adams spent several days resting at his home. As he did so, he remembered Dr. Sam Worthington and the hundreds of yapping mouths in various parts of the insurance company that refused to provide his wife, Marcy Adams, with the treatment she needed in order to have that minuscule chance she deserved to survive her cancer.

  “No, Mr. Adams, we cannot treat her anymore. It says right here that it is forbidden. Very few ever survived cancer at her advanced stage, so it is unreasonable to waste scarce medical care money on something that has no chance to work. We used to do that, but the statistics show that it was quite rare for it to reverse the cancer’s outcome.”

  “But she has a right to be treated so she at least has a chance.”

  “No, sir. She doesn’t. It only works in five percent of the cases.”

  “Maybe she’s in that five percent,” Ralph Adams protested. “We both are agreed that we want to try it.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. It is not authorized.”

  So that was that. Hours and hours of arguing and filling out forms had not helped. Marcy went to the doctors again and again, received the same answer over and over, and was told to just go home and accept fate. So, that was what she did. No one in the entire health care system would budge an inch to give her the chance to live.

  “You’ve decided to kill Marcy, then,” Ralph told Dr. Worthington.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m not the person making the decisions here. Others are doing that for me. It’s no longer up to me to treat her. I wanted to, but I was over-ridden. You really need to speak with your congressmen. They were the ones who set this up.”