Repost from my Barak Obama blog

I'm an Obama supporter, I thought I'd share this on here.

An interesting thing happened to me on July 4th, 2007.

In the twilight hours I found myself in the Emergency Room - without health insurance. I was in-between jobs, literally. I left my job June 27th and I was to start at a new company on July 9th. I had only been unemployed a total of a week and a half.

I fell and dislocated my elbow. My boyfriend and friends rushed me to the emergency room. Luckily, I didn't need an ambulance, the hospital was only minutes away.

My arm must have looked bad. The E.R. attendants swiftly whisked me away to a room and injected me with pain killer within minutes of arriving. "Great!" I thought in a haze of drugs, "this is the fastest emergency room care I have ever had.Little did I know the horror was about to begin.

After only three hours, my boyfriend and I were in the billing office dreading the amount of money we were about to fork over. We had some money in savings and used it to pay half, I put the rest on a credit card.

That total came to $1542.

We marveled at how much money we had to spend, but we were happy that my injury was not any worse. All we had to worry about paying for was the follow up visit, right? Wrong.

It's now July 17th and the bills start to roll in. The hospital sends me a bill that says I owe $864. I call, and say this can't possibly be right. Enquiring minds want to know. Why am I getting a bill? I thought it was paid. I asked the person on the other end of the phone "Why am I getting a bill?"

Well, the amount you paid was an estimate, there could be more charges that weren't in the system at the time you left the hospital. Do you have any health insurance?" the account representative asks.

"No, I was in between jobs." I said.

"I can send you an itemized bill." the account representative states.

"Yes, I would really like to see that."

I'm going to receive that in 7- 10 days.

Next day. The mail comes. I receive yet another bill. This time from the Doctor of the Emergency Room.

$1542 with a disclaimer, "THESE CHARGES ARE FOR THE EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN'S SERVICES AND ARE NOT INCLUDED IN YOUR HOSPITAL BILL."

What? I start to laugh and cry at the same time. This has got to be a joke or a scam. I call.

This time the account representative is sympathetic to my non-health insured plea. She tells me the hospital can offer me discounted services and she can then apply them to my account to reduce her charges. She said she'd suspend my account and give me time to talk to the hospital.

I still haven't gotten my bill for the follow up visit.

My current total is: $3811 with no discounts as of yet.

All this leads me to ask, who is policing health care? Why is it so outrageous? Who can help? I have been donating to Obama's campaign for the last couple months. I have never given politics any money before. I never had a strong reason to believe in someone as a political leader. I had always had a job and health insurance. For a short week and a half, I had neither and the system failed me. This leads me to wonder, what about the poor? Thousands of people go through bankruptcy with this nightmare we call "Modern Medicine". I long for the days of the town doctor, who made house calls and just wanted you healed. Now all we have is faceless corporations trying to turn a profit for their shareholders. Does the modern hippocratic oath involve a payment clause?