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Too sick to work? Need health care? Take a number
Dec 23, 11:51 AM (ET)
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
WASHINGTON (AP) - Master toolmaker John McClain built machine parts with details so small they couldn't be seen with the naked eye. Then a lump on his neck turned out to be cancer.
Shalonda Frederick managed a bakery, and decorated cakes for special occasions. One day her face and hands, and her arms and legs, started clenching up. Then she fell off a ladder at work. It turned out to be multiple sclerosis.
McClain, 56, and Frederick, 33, are unlucky enough to have gotten seriously ill in their most productive years. Theirs is a daily struggle against life-changing circumstances.
As if that weren't enough, after years of counting on employer medical benefits, they are uninsured - and trapped in one of the most troubling gaps in the nation's health care system.
(AP) Shalonda Frederick poses at her apartment in Glen Burnie, Md., Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008. Shalonda...
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After reviewing their cases, the government declared McClain and Frederick too sick to work and started issuing them monthly Social Security disability checks. Then they found out they'd have to wait two years to get health care through Medicare. Even though workers and their employers pay the payroll taxes that fund Medicare, federal law requires disabled workers to wait 24-months before they can begin receiving benefits.
McClain and Frederick are far from alone. An estimated 1.8 million disabled workers are languishing in Medicare limbo at any given time. And about one out of eight dies waiting.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081223/D958HG500.html
Dec 23, 11:51 AM (ET)
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
WASHINGTON (AP) - Master toolmaker John McClain built machine parts with details so small they couldn't be seen with the naked eye. Then a lump on his neck turned out to be cancer.
Shalonda Frederick managed a bakery, and decorated cakes for special occasions. One day her face and hands, and her arms and legs, started clenching up. Then she fell off a ladder at work. It turned out to be multiple sclerosis.
McClain, 56, and Frederick, 33, are unlucky enough to have gotten seriously ill in their most productive years. Theirs is a daily struggle against life-changing circumstances.
As if that weren't enough, after years of counting on employer medical benefits, they are uninsured - and trapped in one of the most troubling gaps in the nation's health care system.
(AP) Shalonda Frederick poses at her apartment in Glen Burnie, Md., Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008. Shalonda...
Full Image
After reviewing their cases, the government declared McClain and Frederick too sick to work and started issuing them monthly Social Security disability checks. Then they found out they'd have to wait two years to get health care through Medicare. Even though workers and their employers pay the payroll taxes that fund Medicare, federal law requires disabled workers to wait 24-months before they can begin receiving benefits.
McClain and Frederick are far from alone. An estimated 1.8 million disabled workers are languishing in Medicare limbo at any given time. And about one out of eight dies waiting.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081223/D958HG500.html
