Rickey and his family live just across Pine Street, and in that small-town American way, our family is intertwined. Our parents go to school together. My older brother played baseball with Rickey’s stepbrother. My cousin is Ricky’s best friend.
Rickey has that adorable giggle and shy smile, and in the kind of love that only a 6-year-old can feel deep inside, I knew we were meant to be. Rickey and I never discussed this arrangement. In fact, looking back, I never got the slightest bit of encouragement from my future husband.
Yet in my heart, I know.
Of course, life isn’t like that. When I was in second grade, my family moved. I didn’t see Rickey again until after our classes merged in junior high. I’m happy to see him, but we’re not boyfriend/girlfriend or anything. Instead, he was an old friend, if one can be an “old friend” at 13. He’s also one of the cutest boys I’ve ever known. You can’t talk to him without smiling. He is quiet and smart, and he doesn’t seem to need the approval of his classmates.
I, who need the recognition of my classmates very much, admire it very much.
After graduation, I followed Rickey from afar. I know he went to college and got a job in computer programming. He also earned a master’s degree in statistics, married and had children, played guitar, and joined a large Baptist church in Joplin, Missouri. He did the same work for a quarter of a century. He also remains friends with my cousin, which is how I keep in touch with him.
You know how some people in your life come into your life but aren’t the positive part of it? That’s Ricky. I thought of him and smiled.
Then I saw his obituary. Rickey died on January 6 at the age of 64. A mutual friend said he retired early and didn’t think he could afford COBRA, so he’s rolling the dice and living without insurance – I think until Medicare kicks in. According to a December 2022 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 64 percent of people who are uninsured say they do so because coverage is too high. According to the same report, by 2021, 20 percent of uninsured adults will choose not to receive medical services. Like many others — not just in the red state of Missouri — Rickey put off seeing a doctor when his health faltered.
According to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 10.5 percent of adults under the age of 65 in this country are uninsured. In Missouri — Ricky’s and my hometown — the figure is slightly higher, according to the Census Bureau. In Connecticut, the Census Bureau says 6.1 percent of people under age 65 are uninsured. That’s nearly 220,000 people rolling the dice in the Nutmeg State and hoping for the best.
It’s a tragic and very American story with the only ending you should expect. A for-profit healthcare system is not a healthcare system. It’s a for-profit system, and if you’ve been lucky enough to have insurance and have ever spent time arguing over charges on the phone, you know what that means.
Someone like Rickey has no chance against that.
In the early days of Obamacare (Affordable Care Act), there was a lot of talk about expanding coverage and reducing unnecessary deaths (like Rickey’s). Obamacare slashed these dire statistics — especially during a pandemic — but we still don’t have universal health care, and at this point we join the list of countries that include South Africa, Iran, and Afghanistan — these Countries have important human rights including, let’s be honest, not providing decent healthcare to their citizens. Conversely, some countries with the worst records of human rights violations (think Saudi Arabia) still provide healthcare to their citizens.
But not us. Despite Obamacare, our health care “system” is still flawed. Even with insurance, gaps can be fatal, and getting insurance can be ridiculously complicated. CNN’s award-winning chief international correspondent (and Yale grad) Clarissa Ward lamented on Twitter last week that her insurer, Cigna, which reported billions in third-quarter revenue, refused to cover a treatment for the company. Dollar. Her son had been approved earlier. In succinct language, she describes a common event that applies to anyone seeking insurance they have paid for.
“For 7 months, @Cigna has not reimbursed my son with special needs for routine treatment. For 7 months, they have blocked me from explaining why, even though my policy clearly covers treatment. For 7 months, I have been in On hold, shuttling between operators. At my wit’s end.
Within two hours of her first tweet, Ward shared that a Cigna representative called her home. She thanked people for their support, acknowledging that not everyone is a regular on CNN and has 519,000 Twitter followers, so not everyone gets a call from an insurance company representative. Struggles for affordable and accessible health care don’t just affect people living on the economic margins trying to make it to 65. It’s a great, bad equalizer.
Susan Campbell is the author of The Frog Hole: Stories of American Community, The Storm: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker, and Dating Jesus: Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl story”. She is a Distinguished Lecturer at the University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.
