Five years ago my husband and I retired a little early, sold our home putting everything in storage and enjoyed traveling around the country in our RV. After a few years we returned to the Pacific Northwest to volunteer our time at Oregon State Parks, Red Cross and other charitable groups purchasing a home three days prior to the stock market dropping 800 points (coincidentally on 9/11) and the following cascade of the exposure of financial manipulation, deceit, and greed exacerbated by the absence of adequate governmental oversight and enforcement of existing law that wiped out almost 30% of our savings in a heartbeat. You may be wondering what this has to do with healthcare but bear with me a little and I'll make my point more clear.

My husband and I are now left with insufficient funds (just 15 months left to bankruptcy) to meet our obligations including our mortgage (currently worth less that we owe) AND our individual healthcare policies. We now face trying to return to the workplace at 64 and 55 years of age to meet our commitments and to try to secure a group healthcare policy.

Access to Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance policies was very wasy for us because we were relatively healthy however, our premiums have increased 26% PER YEAR for the last three years and in the range of 10 to 15% in the years prior. Still we were able to handle the increases until now. We changed our policies from Preferred Provider Plans at an 80/20 split in cost of covered expenses with preventative care to a 50/50 split catastophic plan with only diagnostic coverage - BOTH plans had/have a $2,500 deductible per person and a $12,500 stop loss limit. These changes kept our premium from increasing for THIS YEAR ONLY. In March 2010 these premiums WILL increase again.

I am a high risk patient for colon cancer, readily treatable when caught EARLY. My father is a colon cancer survivor and his mother died from the disease. My sister had her entire colon removed last years when it suddenly stopped functioning. My mother has a history of recurring pre-cancerous colon polyps that had been caught with regular screening colonoscopies and her brother died of the diesase. These screening colonoscopies are NOT covered in my current catastrophic plan - I must wait until I have diagnosable symptoms to have this test be elgible for coverage under my $2,500 deductible plan.

Last week I received a letter from my doctor telling me to have a screening colonoscopy. (My gastroenterologist recommended I have one every three years because of my family history.)
I am now unable to pay for this test not only because it isn't considered eligible for even my $2,500 deductible insurance policy but also because of my decimated cash reserves.

I am embarrassed to admit any longer that I was a community banker for 32 years prior to my retirement and that I find myself in a situation that only OTHERS did. In meetings at the bank we would talk about these high loan-to-value home loans or 'No Doc' or 'Low Doc' processing and how this would come back to haunt those banks that played in the end of the pool. My bank wouldn't extend the high-risk home loans directly and would only BROKER those loans to shift the risk off our books - we also contributed to this mess. We felt that "these banks who played loose in the deep end of the pool would have to pay the price down the road".
Sadly, this never happened and the taxpayer has been forced to pay the bill for their greed and excessive egos. Government has done nothing to restrict the size of these banks to prevent another collapse from happening again in decades to come. You need the make a whole lot of bankers very angry if you stand a chance of preventing this from happening again.

I believe in the USA and can not stress enough the NEED to break-up these big banks and insurance companies as well as regulating tightly the hedge fund business. No company should have this kind of power over Americans, their retirement funds, and now our lives - they are KILLING us with their unbridled capitalism and YOU are permitting it to happen. Pass meaningful legislation that publically funds elections and eliminate the quid pro quo legislators freely give to out-of-control PACs for AMA, insurance companies, bankers, etc. These entities are NOT people, stop treating them as such!

I VOTE, I CONTRIBUTE (used to) and I'm INVOLVED - and I, like my friends, are not stupid, we know where the responsibility lies.