Just Another Uninsured American

Let me tell you a story that is so ordinary and commonplace that you may recognize it as the most truly American of stories.

I have a friend. This guy has worked hard all of his life, and his career achievements have been quite respectable.

He is a journalist, primarily, but he's worked in a number of professions, as a business executive, a screenwriter, a professor, an author, a content producer, a non-profit administrator, a volunteer teacher (unpaid), a writing mentor (unpaid), a private investigator, a TV programmer, a radio producer, a magazine writer, a newspaper reporter, and editorial writer, and investigative reporter, an environmental activist (unpaid), a website editor, a guest lecturer, a guest editor, a blogger, a photographer, a marketing consultant, a branding consultant, and a bunch of other, less glamorous jobs, including pizza delivery man, hobby shop operator, newspaper delivery man, tomato picker, assembly line worker, truck driver, inventory manager, office manager assistant, sales assistant, civil rights activist (unpaid), anti-war activist (unpaid), adviser to a Buddhist sect, volunteer and propagandist for post-Katrina relief organizations (unpaid), chef on a sailboat crew (unpaid, except in lobster tails), dishwasher, carpenter on house-building projects, quasi-doctor administering eye-saving drops to people with Trachoma, tutor (unpaid), song-writer (unpaid), TV movie consultant, magazine entrepreneur, and on and on and on.

In other words, a typical guy with way too much energy who tends to get around.

Throughout his long and colorful "career," he's almost always had health insurance through his employers, which is in his opinion a terrible idea on its face, because he rarely stays in the same "job" longer than a year or two.

You see, my friend is a human butterfly, hopping from flower to flower, trying to spread pollens as widely as possible in the limited time available. If you re-examine the list above, you'll notice that much of what he has done in his life has not been paid for. This is the stuff he prefers, which is giving.

Taking does not come naturally.

But, if you want to know what I think, this guy is an idiot. Sure, he is a good person, generous, compassionate, blah, blah, blah.

But he has never grasped the fundamental principal of America. We don't take care of people here. You are utterly on your own.

Thus, tonight, this poor fellow came home, after a day of not being paid for anything he did, though quite happy until he opened his mail.

There, he discovered the following letter from "Anthem Blue Cross Life and Insurance Co.," which informed him that he has been deemed unsuitable to be insured due to a "cigarette smoking addiction."

Holy Fucking Crap! Unbeknownst to him, it turns out he is a nicotine addict! He must be, because the all-powerful Insurance Company says so.

There's just one, two, maybe three problems here.

This guy has never smoked a cigarette in his life. The famous Surgeon General's Report about the consequences of smoking came out when he was a teenager, and he therefore idealistically (and naively) went to the man he loved most, his father, and begged him to stop smoking.

His Dad promised to do so, but the truth is, he never could do it. Years later, after the inevitable strokes and heart attacks that resulted, his Dad still "went for a walk," which of course meant going outside for a smoke.

In the end, he forgave his father for this addiction. What else can a loving son do?

Meanwhile, as a journalist, over the years, he's been blessed with opportunities to learn about the power that addictions hold over us humans. A former colleague (at Rolling Stone) had inadvertently helped design the seductive "Joe Camel" ads that were intended to addict teenagers to smoking, just as his Dad had long ago been addicted. My friend wrote about that as an editorialist at the San Francisco Examiner, then a Hearst paper, now a free paper.

On many other occasions, he found a platform to advocate against smoking. As only the only son of a Dad can know, my friend comprehended the true, long-term consequences of smoking, and thus his heart broke at the sight of every young man or woman who chose that form of comfort to cope with their pain.

So, tonight's cruel news was also rich with the irony only ignorant bureaucracies can deliver. "How dare you?" he screamed at the form letter at Anthem Blue Cross Life and Health Insurance Co.

But, of course, nobody was there to hear his cry, which echoed across this great land like a ghost with no place to land...

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