Thirty years of health horror stories

I have been in practice for 30 years and during that time I have seen so many Americans, like you and I, who have paid, not only with their life's savings but more dearly with their own lives because they did not have health insurance.

I could tell you about the man who owned his own business and lost it because he was deemed "uninsurable" due to the diagnosis of diabetes. He went on to have open heart surgery with complications.

I could tell you about a healthy woman who was denied insurance because her records carried an elevated blood pressure reading, she was not yet 65 and could not sign in to the only available government-run program, Medicare. I could also tell you about those who delayed seeing a doctor because they could not afford it, and, hence, delayed diagnosis of a serious illness.

These and many other stories I have experienced personally as a physician. The current system works better for insurance companies, who place profit above the health concerns of the American people. I have one request for those who oppose President Obama's plan to make the insurance companies accountable: Place yourself in that position of a woman who lost her job and insurance, and even though she was healthy, she was denied coverage.

Tens of millions of Americans have no health insurance; they live on the edge of financial disaster. For these Americans, President Obama's plan will offer affordable choices.

As a doctor who cares for her patients, I ask you to become informed about the plan, by reading it directly, and not though the hysterical rhetoric of politics. We are close to enacting reform; don't let this chance slip away by indolence or politics.

Ada C Rahn, M.D.

Elmhurst