The US political blogosphere for months has been consumed by the healthcare “debate”, which I’ve only sporadically read about nor blogged about because it really wasn’t much of my business, but a purely domestic political issue. The main impression I got was that all the wingnuts seem to think it will bring slavery back to the US, the sort of moderate left/mainline Democrats think the bills on offer were okay but not great but needed to be passed because something needed to be done while those on the left of the Democrats were skeptical of it as it still provided too much power to insurance companies, amongst other objections. I think the latter may well be right, that it’s (partially) still a sellout to corporate interests, but ironically the fervent opposition to it by the wingnuts means it still is a triumph for leftwing values. If it actually works as intended it will be another of those government programmes even wingnuts don’t dare tamper with, like medicare and perhaps a stepping stone to proper healthcare.

If nothing else, the healthcare bill means that your favourite science fiction and fantasy authors, not to mention comic book writers and artists might finally get some decent insurance they can afford. Let George R. R. Martin explain the reality of healthcare in the US before the bill:

I’ve been a full-time freelance writer since 1979, and I’ve been fortunate enough to do very well at it, thank you. As a result, I have health insurance. But even for me, it hasn’t been easy. I remember, when I first moved to Santa Fe and went full time as a writer, I was coming off three years teaching college, when my health insurance had been covered by my job. Now I had to find my own. I was young and healthy back then… even slim and fit, believe it or not… but I didn’t have a lot of money, and when I went looking for an individual policy, everything I found cost way more than I could afford and covered way less than my group insurance with the college had. To get affordable insurance, I had to join a group: the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce. As a “small business,” I joined the CofC and signed up for their group coverage. It was not great insurance, by any means, but it gave me some protection for a few years. But that was in 1980 or so. In a more recent decade, when the Writer’s Guild policy that had covered me during my Hollywood years expired, I tried the same dodge… only to discover that while I could still join the Chamber of Commerce as a sole proprietorship, I could no longer get their health insurance. That was now available only to members who had two full-time employees. The insurance company had… you guessed it… changed the rules.

From 1997-1998 I served as vice-president of SFWA, the Science Fiction Writers of America, in the administration of Michael Capobianco, one of SFWA’s most outstanding leaders. A LOT of freelance writers had no health insurance, and Capo did what no other president before him had been able to do: find a decent, affordable group policy for SFWA members. It was through Aetna, and while it wasn’t as good as some other policies — the WGA policy was much better –it was good enough, and certainly both cheaper and better than anything any writer could find as an individual. I signed up, as did a couple hundred other SFWAns, and for a couple of years we had the peace of mind that having such insurance brings.

And then Aetna dropped us. No particular reason was ever given. Guess we weren’t profitable enough for them. They just cancelled the entire group. That wasn’t allowed in New York State, where state laws required them to continue insuring policy holders resident in that state. But those of us in the other forty-nine states were out of luck. Nor were SFWA’s officers (Capo and I were out of office by that time) able to find ANY other insurance company willing to step in and take Aetna’s place. We were a group with fourteen hundred members, a couple hundred of whom had showed themselves willing and able to purchase group insurance (the rest, presumably, had policies from day jobs or through spouses, or were unable to afford any insurance whatsover)… and yet no one would insure us.

Like I said, I am one of the lucky ones. I was able to go back to the WGA for a few years, and from them to COBRA, and thanks to our state laws in New Mexico, I could purchase insurance through the New Mexico Health Insurance Alliance coming off COBRA without fear of being refused for pre-existing conditions. So I’m covered.

But I have a lot of friends who are not nearly so fortunate.

Now compare that to what I wrote a month ago about our own medical situation:

We will never get the bill for this, never will have to worry whether this emergency operation or the cost of S.’s lifelong immunosuppressant drugs treatment would bankrupt us, never even will have to worry whether it will put our insurance costs up or whether the costs of the transplant will be balanced out by the savings in not having to have dialysis anymore.

And that matters a lot. If there’s any time when you don’t need more worries, it’s when you’re seriously ill. We didn’t have to worry about money; had we been in the same situation in the US, even with healthcare insurance we would have.