I've been feeling rather burnt out of activist blogging lately. Part of me just doesn't feel like talking about isms of any kind, even ableism. I'm... bored of all that.
At the same time, though, ableism isn't bored of me. I'm sure some of you remember my searching earlier this year for private health insurance. I called several insurance companies, figuring the right thing to do would be to tell them about my disability, and get its affecting my premiums overwith.
Regardless of my repeated insistence that my disability is mild, I got the curt response not that my premiums would cost more, but that I was ineligible for any coverage at all.
I finally got someone to quote me something. Said person suggested what I'd been thinking all along: that coverage shouldn't be denied me.
We talk a lot in the blogoverse about the more subtle effects of isms. We discuss what motivates "offhand" remarks, what drives distasteful social trends, etc. And that can lead to burnout easily, or at least it can for me. I'm tired of the endless "what drives people to do/want/wear X?" discussions.
But the thing to remember, and it's hard to remember when we're in the umpteenth "should women shave their legs?" or "it's not okay to use 'gay' as an insult" discussion, is that isms haven't just become mild annoyances to gab about on blogs. Sometimes big things happen... like not getting health insurance.
It turned out all right for me, but it only did because I proved to some sympathetic guy from some big insurance company that I'm not that disabled after all. This is entirely backwards, and means the only reason I don't have to pay out of pocket for my health care (or crowd ERs) is, essentially, my passing privilege.
That's flat out wrong, and even dangerous.
- Current Mood:
discontent
Comments
(I really hope my brother can get some health insurance. Or that we get, y'know, universal basic coverage in this damn country. Or something.)
holy shit.
*stunned silence*
the whole thing is really depressing.
You're absolutely right that it is incredibly busted that it takes passing privilege to get health care.
Edited at 2009-05-02 12:39 pm (UTC)
Most people with severe disabilities in Canada have their health care subsidized more heavily than the rest of the population, based primarily on their income and its impact on the ability to pay the health premiums.
In Alberta, which went premium-free as of January, I used to pay $44 quarterly for an individual. It was $88 for a family.
And thank you for the reminder that there are still a LOT of everyday, huge, isms that are inhibiting people's lives.
It sucks that insurance companies discriminate so arbitruarily based on disability. I *could* say, "People with cp should get together and fight back the way the deaf community did..." and that might help people with cp, but then other people with other types of disabilities would probably still be left behind. We need something more systematic, though I'm not clever enough to know what, exactly. Other than fighting discrimination in general (for example using the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a legal tool -- http://www.un.org/disabilities ) but there also needs to be something more targeted.
Andrea S.
http://wecando.wordpress.com