Review: I feel her frustration
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 21, 2014
Erin has more than one serious health condition, but she handled her written account with humor and aplomb that surprised me. My mother was diagnosed with a blood cancer in 2008 and then uterine cancer in 2012 and I sympathize absolutely with Erin in her frustrations in dealing with doctors and insurance companies, since it fell to me by default to field all the phone calls, errand running and doctor appointments for my mother, who lives with us. I came to believe that the people who set up these nightmarish systems do so deliberately so that the majority of us will just give up and die gracefully. I'll never forget the "great news" from our pharmacy that they had managed to get her needed meds down to $8000 a month rather than $10,000.Later in the story, we get into issues regarding marriage equality and politics. I realize that being LDS, my perspective is different from hers. I hope they weren't LDS missionaries that her dog frightened away from the door, sparing her "having" to talk to them. She mentioned quite a few times about people who made unfair generalizations against other groups, and I wondered whether she noticed the generalization she herself was doing. But, I do understand her frustration. Not only do I have the experience with my mother, but I have a son with autism, and have spent many hours on the phone fighting with insurance companies over his coverage. Erin was very happy with the advent of Obamacare, and in a perfect world I could have agreed with her. One of the most infamous statements of our time has been that "If you like your coverage you can keep your coverage." The debate rages on whether that was an outright lie, uninformed inaccuracy, stalling for time, or (fill in the blank yourself), but whatever it was, it has turned out to be untrue. And it has messed a lot of people up. My mother is one of them, and I have a lot of friends who have fallen victim to the so-called "Affordable Healthcare Act."I do appreciate that everyone should have insurance but the current system penalizes the people who can't buy it at inflated prices and successfully skewers many of those who can afford it. I don't blame people for wanting insurance and certainly not for wanting to survive. We are all there. If the ACA had been a viable program, we could have all been helped, but it isn't, and it needs to be either gotten rid of or drastically altered.The short of the review is that this book was really heart felt and well written. I didn't even see any errors, which is unusual. She made me feel her frustration, but the thing that really amazed me was her ability to keep going and, at least at first, to keep up with her interesting life and activities. I think every insurance company employee should have a copy of this and be made to read it.I received a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you Erin, for letting me read it.