The Anxiety Of Anxiety

A little less than a year ago I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. This conclusion was arrived at after I had been through a series of panic attacks that I had mistaken for asthma flare-ups. Once my doctor and I came up with a game plan, I was given some anti-anxiety meds to take on a daily basis and a prescription for Xanax to deal with panic attacks that were too much to manage with breathing techniques and other coping mechanisms.

For the first few months of this treatment plan, I felt a great deal better. Anyone who has dealt with panic attacks and anxiety is aware that often the worst parts of these episodes is the fear that arises from not knowing what is happening to your own body. The attacks are usually punctuated with feelings of dread along with physical symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pain and tingling throughout the upper body. Like most sufferers my symptoms were very typical. Knowing that these actual, physical symptoms I was experiencing were mostly manifestations of my thoughts and emotions made them easier to talk myself through. But not always.

Recently, these symptoms have become more constant even though I have maintained my normal regimen of meds. The panic attacks now are often preceded or followed by exhaustion. In addition to my previous symptoms, I have become more moody and down even when I have not had outright attacks. These are hallmark signs of depression and anxiety and I am just one of millions of sufferers. Realizing this was just like having any other illness, my recent battle with depression led me to try to find a local psychologist or counselor to help me deal with these issues.

Since I have health insurance, I presumed that the best place for me to start was by calling my insurance provider to find out how much mental health coverage I had and which therapists in my area participated with their plan. After bouncing through a labyrinthine automated telephone system and waiting on hold for several minutes, I was informed that I only had mental health coverage if I was admitted to a hospital or institution. There was, as the terse response from the other end of the line explained it, "No outpatient mental health coverage on my plan."

The health insurance I purchase is from the biggest provider in my state, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. This is a non-profit insurance group that charges me more than $600 per month to cover just my wife and I. Because we own our business, I am not on a corporate plan or getting insurance from the office where my spouse works. And yes, that $600 does not even cover my two children. We get special coverage for them through a state children's insurance plan that is marvelous and is also a Blue Cross plan.

Not only is there no "outpatient mental health" coverage on my plan, but my wife and I only receive two doctor visits and a physical each year without paying a hefty co-pay based on the percentage of the cost of the visit. But, If we get sick three times in one year, there is at least some degree of coverage. In other words, if you have the flu, you can pay a part of the bill and get treated. If you have depression, anxiety and panic attacks you can pay for it on your own or you can just learn to live with it.

This is an illness that affects my family in a very real way as well. When I suffer through bouts of depression or anxiety, I am much more likely to be irritable and less likely to enjoy the scant opportunities that the four of us get for family time during a typical work week that is overfilled with commitments, distractions and long days at the office. In short, this disease is keeping me from living a full and complete life, just like any serious disease would do to my body.

Virtually the entire medical community acknowledges that mental illness is just as real as physical illnesses like cancer, diabetes or a viral infection. So, why do we allow our insurance companies to treat them like they're vastly different from each other? I do not choose to be depressed and I sure as shit don't like pulling my car over and clutching my chest in a full blown panic attack wondering if I am going to die or if I am going crazy. The illness is real and I live with it everyday, and I need to treat it. Sadly, after I have paid more than $5000 per year for sub-par coverage, I don't have a lot of extra money lying around to pay hundreds more a month for the psychological treatment I have come to require for my own happiness and well being. Certainly, there are more demure ways to phrase it, but this situation is bullshit.

This circumstance is not the first time in my life that I have felt bamboozled by the insurance industry. When our youngest daughter was just a toddler, she was hospitalized several times for asthma and our co-pays and other medical charges nearly bankrupted us, even though we had insurance at the time. Living in this day and age with no health insurance is simply a gamble our family cannot take and the coverages that are available to us as one family looking for a plan are shoddy at best. The system costs too much and provides too little in return, but there are seemingly no worthwhile alternatives.

When I hear people rail on those trying to fix the health care system I am filled with rage and rancor. If you have not lived through these circumstances and have never been pushed to the point that you felt you were going to lose everything because of an illness, there is no way to explain to you how broken the system really is. Care costs too much, insurance is merely a necessary evil and stop gap measure and the situation keeps rolling in the wrong direction.

I don't claim to have all, or even any of the answers, but I know that millions of lives are damaged by this broken system and no one truly seems interested in finding an actual way to solve the problem. Sure, there is political jockeying and election year theory, but never a comprehensive plan to get a handle on this issue that is sending people to the poor house. Hell, the only way I'll ever be able to afford to treat my illness is if it sends me to the nut house.