It's the phone call in the middle of the night that no parent ever wants to receive. Your son, a student at George Washington University, has been taken by ambulance to the emergency room. The doctor on the other end of the line explains, as you desperately wake-up into the nightmare, that in a bicycle accident your child has landed on his jaw, has broken almost all the bones in his face and has lost many teeth. He's lucky; there was no spinal damage, no brain injury, no eye involvement, and he's alive. But even after 5 hours of surgery, and 8 titanium plates installed into his face, you are told that reconstruction and recovery will take a year. Somehow your son gets through the long hospitalization, and the trauma.

But there is no preparation for the next phone call: all further medical treatment is being denied by your insurance company. Even when the surgeon and the oral surgeon have said that the procedures needed are urgent, and without them he is risking his life. Even when your son has to have 6 root canals in one day, and has several abscesses, all coverage is denied. This top-rated insurance company, Fallon, (and you have their best plan), announces that as far as they are concerned, "It's all dental." (and they don't cover dental). What about the piece of jaw that broke off in the accident, and requires a bone graft? Dental.. because someday, you might just decide to implant a tooth in that new jaw. And that would be dental. What about the necessary reconstruction of his lip and gum? It's in the mouth, isn't it?... it must be dental.. You read in the policy, the section that states that in the case of accidental injury, the plan covers "reconstructive services to repair or restore appearances"..."for instance the repair of a facial deformity following a serious automobile accident." But the insurance company says.. we never meant your kid should have teeth; we never meant that his lip should be able to move like it used to. We won't pay for the oral surgery that he'll need to work and function in the world. Allow us to present to you a $65,000 medical bill, that you will have to pay yourself, in the next 6 months, if you want your child to have a normal life.

If the abscesses don't stay local, and the infection travels, they will pay for the ensuing medical hospitalization, as he fights for his life from osteomyelitis, (bone infection), blood infection, and or sepsis. But they will not pay the oral surgeon to remove the dead teeth that would cause such terrible medical complications. And they don't really care that your child's face could be disfigured for life, without the reconstruction of his jaw. The thing they do care about is money. And restoring a mouth costs money. The insurance company writes that they don't think restoring a mouth is "medical". And no matter what your surgeon or your oral surgeon documents about the medical necessity of the treatments, the "health" insurance company gets to over-ride their professional assessment, and define it as "dental."(Just in case you think that some dental insurance might cover such catastrophic damages, don't hold your breath. Most dental insurance has a $1000, or $2000 cap per person, per year.)

As you scramble to try to find $65,000 in hard cash to pay out in the next few months, you no longer wonder why 1 in 3 bankruptcies in this country are precipitated by uncovered medical expenses. You start talking to a lawyer . You hire a Health Care Advocate. You throw whatever mental and financial resources you have at the problem, in your attempt to protect your child's life. And you pray that you might prevent some other family from ever having to go through this bureaucracy that reminds you of a short story by Kafka.

Our obligation is not to win this battle. The sacred obligation is to fight a system that endangers the health of all of us. You take up the cause of fighting the health insurance industry, not only for your own child, but also on behalf of everyone who actually thinks that their insurance policies are straightforward and comprehensive. Corporations have little incentive to protect the interests of their members, when it comes down to paying significant amount of money.

Like many Americans, I sincerely believed that we had paid for a health insurance policy that would medically protect our family in the cases of terrible accidents or illnesses. This is the same betrayal of trust as those who are the victims of fraud. And the health insurance company's stable of lawyers, who come up with exceptions, and exclusions, and fine-print loopholes, and pre-existing condition exemptions, are apparently working full time. Armed with their amendments, and whatever they declare this week to be a 'grey area', and their arrogant insistence that they have the right to overturn the decisions of physicians, the ordinary citizen is seriously out gunned. In the New York Times this year, the former Justice of the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Conner wrote an editorial that claimed, " We're all uninsured now." One of the most powerful and wealthy women in America could not obtain health care for her grandchild, because of a "pre-existing condition."

As long as the health insurance industry focuses on maximizing its profits, as long as accountants and lawyers decide who gets medical treatment, and who doesn't, all of us are vulnerable. As long as kids ride bicycles, and fly over their handlebars, you need to know now, whether or not your insurance will ever allow your child to smile again. As long as this country allows people with health insurance, or without health insurance to lose their lives or their life savings (and sometimes tragically, both), we are neither the "land of the free or the brave." We are not living in a healthy society.

Jesus said that what happens to the "least of my children" is ultimately important. Health care reform is personal. It concerns you, everyone you love, and everyone you don't know. Find out the details of health coverage you and your family are carrying. All of us need to find a way to make sure that all God's children will receive the care they need, when they fall.