45,000 Americans who die every year for lack of health care, diagnosed in the ER in terminal condition from diseases that could have been cured with timely intervention, is but one price we pay for freedom.   15 times the number of people who were killed on 9/11, this number evokes little terror for most people.  Probably as many Americans die by gunshot, traffic accident, many other causes.  45,000 preventable deaths a year in the greatest country on earth, because of an inadequate profit-driven health care system that also provides the most modern and cutting edge medical treatment in the world, is not seen as a major problem. 

We all know American health care, compared to that in the rest of the industrialized world, is broken.  There’s a strong argument that the cause is the “free market”– you get the health care you can afford to pay for and that unbridled competition is preferable to any kind of government regulation in delivering the best product to consumers.   Obama’s bold plan, to leave fewer Americans dead in the ER from preventable diseases, was a compromise with the “free market”, based on the plan of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation and drafted by the health insurance industry.  Is it better than what existed before when there were virtually no rules for what health insurance corporations could charge?  Probably.  Is it an excellent way to control out-of-control health care costs in the US and the crisis in American health?  Probably not.

But I have to sign up.  So I call 1-855-355-5777, the help line.  They can help you if you are an employer, an employee, a navigator, a broker or all others.  It turns out, if you are “all others” that the menu is only for generic help, there does not seem to be anyone who picks up the phone at any of the options, even though a recording apologizes for longer than usual wait times due to overwhelming demand.

So you initiate a screen chat with a nice woman named Sonia.  You ask the specific question that is hanging up your application, disabling you from applying before the 12/23 deadline. Sonia writes back that screen chat personnel are not authorized to answer such questions and that you should call the help line, 1-855-355-5777.  This number, of course, puts you in an endless loop, as far as I can tell, since there seems to be no place to wait your turn to speak to a representative, unless, perhaps, if you are a navigator, broker, employer. 

I tell Sonia I was unable to get any information in several calls to the help line and ask if perhaps a “navigator” can help me navigate enrolling in Obamacare.  She gives me a bunch of numbers, I call each one and I leave my name and number seven or eight times.  I’m told by one place that the wait for a navigator call back is about a week.  At another place I’m given an email address I check twice, to contact a navigator by email.   I get this message when I try to send my email: