A real need for affordable access to health care

None of the posturing from either side in the wake of Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court landmark ruling on health care helps solve the root problem that led to the passage of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009.

Anyone buying health insurance, or accessing health care without insurance, can attest to the steady increase in associated costs over the past 10, 20, 30 years and more. Experts say this rate of increase in health care costs and the percent of personal, business and government budgets it eats up are unsustainable.

We’re not sure what to make of Thursday’s ruling. History will provide a better yardstick for that measure.

But the problem persists. We hope the Affordable Care Act is a chapter in our efforts as a nation to turn this tide and reduce the percent of budgets spent on health care, and increase the number of people who can afford to access routine health care.

The legislation is far from perfect. We hope it’s a starting point, a place to begin our journey to end this era of ever-increasing health care costs.

We are too often the front line when people try to access care for an ailing member family that they can’t afford. A fix to health care in our view is one that would mean fewer people — better yet, none — who resort to asking for our help raising money to afford the medical care their child, parent or sibling needs to live.

Too often, who lives and who dies is decided by dollars and cents. We don’t have a name for that, but we’d like to move away from that system toward one where basic health care is affordable for all. Isn’t that how it was in our parents’ and grandparents’ day?

We know this is a complex national issue and any resolution to it will be hampered, hamstrung and hindered by party politics. Thursday, our email inbox was filled with press releases about the ruling from organizations and politicians seeking election or re-election alternately touting or vowing to continue the fight against the Affordable Care Act.

What seems lost in this political power struggle is the underlying need for meaningful reform to our current for-profit health care system. This isn’t about one political party or the other winning; it’s about people dying for want of access to affordable care.

Take the man who works full-time and pays for insurance, but can’t afford the co-pay to see a doctor. Then there is the woman who found a lump in her breast, but fatally put off a doctor’s exam because of the cost. What about the victim of a violent crime who is left with stacks of medical bills and faces bankruptcy as a result?

There is a real need for affordable access to health care. However we arrive at that destination, it won’t be a moment too soon.