Why We Need the Public Option

SLO Tribune, Letters to the Editor, August 4

Need public option

Except for a couple of accidents, I have been in good health throughout my life. However, at age 61 I was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer.

Twenty-one months of chemotherapy have gone well, and I am in what may be a remission. However, the treatment has wiped out my energy, and I cannot maintain a job that would pay my bills and health insurance.

In three months, my COBRA option goes to full cost and state disability runs out. No job, no assets, no insurance. This is the wall. I will become one of the 46 million uninsured Americans. Is this unforeseen development going to plunge me into bankruptcy and homeless-ness? My only solution is to become healthy enough to earn a living again. But with this prior condition, who will insure me?

I am in need of a public insurance option. Why is it that, when I became seriously ill, I was quickly reduced to a second-class citizen in the wealthiest nation in the world?

Our pending health care reform needs to deny the profit motives of those who enrich themselves off a broken system and effectively serve the needs of the common citizens of the greatest nation on Earth.

Jim Long
Pismo Beach