DougR,
You misread what I wrote big time!

I have no private health insurance now, and have not had it since the outpatient parts of the insurance sponged up every cent of cash money I had.

We couldn't afford to pay the premiums, so we had to drop that American Family health policy. That was in 1997---12 years ago.

I am 68 now and am on Social Security and Medicare.

Because my wife was too ill to work enough over the last 40 years, she cannot qualify for Social Security or Medicare---ever.

In order for her to have health insurance through Illinois Medicaid, an absolutely miserable bureaucratic mess, I MUST remain destitute and poverty stricken, or else she'd have no insurance at all, and could not secure the 150 shock treatments she has needed for her ongoing drug-resistant depression.

SINGLE PAYER government run -- and paid for -- health insurance is our only hope for for getting out from under the constraints of Medicaid's impoverishing spend-down system.

Art Thieme