Meanwhile, in America, the greatest nation on Earth, I needed heart surgery to replace a valve. While waiting to have this procedure, my condition worsened and my cardiologist decided my heart was too weak for conventional heart surgery so she put me in touch with a surgeon in Boston who was capable of using a new innovative procedure developed in Germany to replace the valve without open heart surgery. While waiting, I lost my coverage because my birthday came and I became 26.

I was on my parent's plan because I was in college. After graduation, I planned to begin working, but I couldn't work full time because my heart was in such bad shape. So I had no insurance at all until Maryland expanded it's Medicaid coverage. I went back to the cardiologist and things had deteriorated further. She decided I needed a defibrillator So I had an operation to put one of those in. I was on the waiting list again to go to Boston for the valve replacement and a few weeks before the date, my insurance company informed me that I had been denied. Why was I denied? Well I'm not allowed to go outside of my state for healthcare. This was absurd because just a few months before, I had the defibrillator surgery done in Washington DC, which is not Maryland. I had also traveled to Boston for testing and they had no problem with that. So after a few weeks of very frustrating communication with the insurance company, I pulled my ace out of my sleeve. I contacted my Congressman, Steny Hoyer. I happened to have a connection with him because he was a childhood friend of my grandmothers. So Steny's people looked into it and lo and behold, I was approved. But not before I lost my place on the waiting list so it was back to the bottom again. Eventually, I did get the surgery but not before permanent damage was sustained due to all the waiting.

When people tell me that "socialized" medicine is no good because they make you wait, I have to laugh. They also like to say that there can be no innovation in a universal system. I like to point out to them that the procedure which saved my life was innovated in Germany, a country which has a universal system.