Diabetes Blog – Happy-Medium.net

There’s been a lot going on at work lately. The company I work for is in the process of getting rid of some positions, and some people I’ve worked with are going to be leaving over the coming months.

The hard part about this is that we all knew there would be a headcount reduction, but because of the way it was done, we spent about three months between having the headcount reduction known, and finding out whether we were affected. I’m not making a judgement call on that, but I think you can understand when I say it created some stress in the office and at home this Spring.

I’m happy to say that I’m still employed.

I’m also learning some new things at work, which I really like. A lot of people think if you don’t keep learning, you’ll become irrelevant after a while. In truth, I just think that doing the same thing and never doing anything new is boring. So I’m glad to keep learning for that reason above any other.

Through all of this, remarkably, my blood sugar has been good. My most recent A1c was stellar, in fact.

The reason for this is because I am employed with benefits and don’t have to worry about how to pay for health care. There may be no more significant reason for my success than that. Being enrolled in my employer’s health care plan has been a critical part of living well with diabetes.

I am an increasingly rare breed in America. Someone who is employed full time, with good benefits (including a health insurance plan), and enough compensation to pay for my out of pocket medical and prescription costs.

In the past few months, I spent a lot of time planning and calculating about how to survive if this wasn’t the case anymore. What kind of job could I land? How much money do I really have to make? If it came down to it, how much less could I take if I could just get a job with health care benefits?

I fear that this is exactly what some of my colleagues are going through at this very moment.

How did we get here? How did we, collectively, as a nation, allow ourselves to have our hopes and dreams for a better future be reduced to “but I’ve got to have health care”?

Not all of the people being let go at work are in the United States. All of our people losing their jobs except the ones here in the USA live in countries with some sort of national insurance that will protect them and provide basic care. To be sure, they pay taxes for this privilege, but they also won’t have to worry about needing to go to the emergency room after they finish their employment with our company.

We all know what needs to be done here. We know who is standing in the way of making that happen. We can do something about it. If we truly believe in health care as a human right, we need to confirm that with votes. It won’t be quick, but I can guarantee the effort will be worth it.