11 years 2 years

Last week marked 11 years of living with ms. And it was my niece's second birthday. All of it, everything, what a momentous month, July!

I am a little frustrated by congressional progress causing health insurance reform and health care reform. That should be disprogress or unprogress or illprogress? I have great insurance and I want everyone to have great insurance too, everyone to get quality affordable healthcare when they need it.

Where are the North Dakota populists? Will Montanans again elect Max Baucus in 5 years? Montana deserves better representation.

I am sending another message to NMSS activists. We need to visit with our elected members of congress, to sensatize them to the needs of patients. Sensatize...

Last week started with this news: • Research links broken marriages with chronic health problems

I've met all kinds of people in different kinds of 'marriages' since I began living with multiple sclerosis. I have met people who have remained in a bad / dysfunctional marriage in order to continue to stay on a spouse's health insurance. I have met people who have remained "legally" married in order to continue to stay on a spouse's health insurance, even though the couple really isn't a couple anymore, living separate lives. I've met committed to each other couples who are legally divorced (but they wear rings), even with kids in the house, so that the person with multiple sclerosis can absorb the huge medical debts and declare bankruptcy so as to not destroy the family. Our country needs Health insurance reform, health care reform.

I think there are counselors who will sometimes recommend legal divorce to help keep people together if one of the spouses has a catastrophic medical condition with ever mounting debts (then bankruptcy).

I have been posting this message variously (and people are actually visiting this blog):

My medicine that cost $960 per month in 2002 now costs $2800 per month. The medicine hasn't gotten more effective. The U.S. patent expired in 2007. The drug is owned by Bayer Pharmacutical and in Germany, a person can buy a more inexpensive generic. The reason there is no generic is because the FDA has not been empowered to license generic "biological" drugs. Please ask Rep. Baldwin to support HR 1427, which would help create a pathway for safe generic biological drugs. You can call representative Baldwin at (608) 257-9800; she sits on the congressional committee handling this. Please ask her to support HR1427 -- for too many people, their insurance requires them to pay a percentage of their prescription as a co-pay, sometime as much as $900 per month for their medicine affecting who might even get the medicine s/he needs. We don't have PHARMA's radio and tv budget (if you seen/heard the recent PHARMA ad blitz) -- you can help make a difference for thousand of ill people and yourself because this is one of the reasons your insurance is getting so expensive. Thanks from a Middleton neighbor.

Talk to your member of congress. Our country needs Health insurance reform, health care reform.