The recent killing of former UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has pushed to the forefront widely shared public anguish over a broken healthcare system. Online, people have expressed emotions ranging from horror to frustration with the healthcare system. Stateside spoke with Tracie McMillan, Detroit-based journalist and author, about her family's experience getting her mother long-term medical care, which she writes about in her book, The White Bonus.
McMillan’s mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1981, and subsequently was in a car accident where she suffered a brain injury. Soon after, insurance companies began to fight over who would cover the medical expenses because of her pre-existing condition.
“There's always this temptation in the US to start trying to, like, game out how sick was the person and did they really need the help or all this sort of proving that someone deserved care,” McMillan said. “And for me, you know, the more I went through this, the more I was like, I think the problem is that we had to fight about that, right?”
McMillan’s mother was initially only supposed to be sent to a rehabilitation center for three months–but she ended up bouncing between different centers for the next nine years, constantly being told it would not be safe for her to go home. And each month, they would bill McMillan’s family between $9,000 and $15,000.
“Even though like we weren't poor in terms of not having enough food or anything like that, the financial terror that I was living with every day was horrific,” McMillan said. “I mean, every day I was worried about, we don't have enough money for mom.”
She said speaking about the healthcare system's flaw as a bureaucratic, abstract issue disguises the real problem–that people are dying.
“We have to think about if when you're living in the richest country in the world, if what you want to be doing is being like, you know what? That person's going to be too expensive so, I guess we'll just let them go,” McMillan said. “I think in my family it feels like that's the calculus we were expected to make.”
To hear the full conversation with Tracie McMillan, listen to the Stateside Podcast.
GUEST ON THIS EPISODE:
- Tracie McMillan, Detroit-based journalist and author
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