Lymestats has the Facts when it comes to Lyme Disease & Chronic Lyme Disease Statistics
Did you know? The financial impact of Lyme Disease and Chronic Lyme Disease annual expenses (healthcare and lost wages) averages a total of $53,000 per patient in 2015? Now, in 2018, imagine the new number reported as a result of surges in healthcare and housing costs … mind boggling.
In Silicon Valley/Bay Area, where LiveLoveManja resides, $53 easily would be the lost wages (salary or hourly) on its own. Healthcare costs, for complete coverage with an individual plan is about $500 a month plus copays for visits, prescriptions, labs, and imaging. This is just the costs for the “covered” care, meaning everything included in the “all inclusive” healthcare individual plan. Labs, testing, imaging, and scripts out of the included plan are out of pocket and treated as if the individual is un-insured, when the reality of the situation is quite the contrary.
Why pay this much for health insurance? Why not get Covered California, Medicare, or a more affordable plan? The truth of the matter is when you have a “chronic” condition in CA such as thyroid disease, a surgery (hip arthroscopic), ADHD, lyme, chronic food allergies (anaphylaxis), or any other chronic disease you are seen as “high risk” by the insurance companies and most plans won’t take you. Ashley Nicolei paid a high premium (over $1000) a month with Cobra while on bed rest from hip surgery in 2013 - the bed rest was for about six months with intensive physical therapy for about a year after. Her coverage dropped her right after surgery because she was seen as “high risk”. This is illegal in 2018 (discrimination), because people under 30 were losing insurance coverage for being “high risk” patients. Illness out of their control. Would you do that to a diabetes patient? They are chronic, yet they are protected? The same thing happened to this group years ago before new laws were created to protect them. It’s a shame people are punished for using their health insurance, because insurance can’t make money off of them anymore. Seniors and children are protected, even adults under 26 years. But if you are between 26-35 years, all the sudden you are more “risky” to insure? Sounds like age discrimination to us. And it is. However, companies can get away with it.
Ashley Nicolei of LiveLoveManja has not been reimbursed for the out of pocket costs while covered or for the price-gauged Cobra insurance when her insurance dropped her due to being a “high risk” young adult. We imagine there are many more out there, like us, who have wrongly been discriminated against due to age and chronic disease or injury. LiveLoveManja would like to create a safe space to share your experience, if you would like by commenting on this post, reblogging with an attached comment, a DM, or however you feel called to doing so. Because knowledge is powerful and there is power in numbers (community). Together, we can create more awareness and a better plan of action in the community and the nation at large, to treat people with chronic food allergies, Lyme disease, thyroid disease, and other chronic conditions with the respect and compassion they need. To make accommodations accessible for them, rather than shameful for situations outside of their control.
Not by charging people more taxes or taking more money from the rich, but by creating awareness in the healthcare and medical industries as well as the state legislature, to allow patients to choose the treatment they want and need and have it covered as long as they are paying coverage. As they are paying for coverage after all, they should be allowed to choose what tests, labs, prescriptions, supplements, doctors, and specialists they want - they are paying for it. Is it not right for the payer to choose? And to be covered by their insurance, as that is what they are paying for?
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