Attn Soon to Graduate New Yorkers: There May Be Hope for Us!

*ouchies
About a month ago on an sunny January morning I was at REEN's apartment getting ready for work when I slipped on a puddle of water in the kitchen and cut my finger on a coffee mug that smashed on the floor when I fell. Probably one of the more bizarre accidents I've had next to breaking my pinky toe last winter walking down the stairs. Conveniently enough, REEN lives just 4 blocks from the local Brooklyn hospital in her neighborhood so she and my bloody finger walked over to the ER to git me some stitches.

Luckily I had no serious damage to my finger (which happened to be my wedding finger...I feel like that was some sort of weird sign) and left with just three stitches and a prescription for antibiotics. However, while we were in the hospital filling out paperwork and waiting to be seen, I kept overhearing families discussing problems with health insurance--certain things not covered, plans not accepted, or (most often) simply not having any. As I slid my BlueCross BlueShield card across the counter I thought about how fortunate I was to have insurance and how totally fucked I would be if I didn't. And THEN I thought to myself "SHIT! I graduate next spring. Only one year of insurance left! The job market is shit right now! FUCKKKKK!!"

With the chances of a national health care program starting within the next year looking pretty slim and no current plans to move to Canada, I was feeling pretty bummed. And THEN I was doing my daily sweep of the Times the other day and stumbled on this article discussing exactly my predicament. The article talks about uninsured young adults, mostly recent college grads, living in NYC who have resorted to self-medicating (not always such a good idea) as an alternative to hospital visits. Now I know I am being classist and excluding a much larger issue of healthcare, but I thought this was still discussion-worthy especially since a few of us writers are either currently experiencing or going to experience this situation in the near future. Anyway, THERE MAY BE HOPE!!!

New York's Governor Paterson, who took over after Eliot's lil' scandal, is proposing a bill that would allow our parents (New York State residents) to continue to claim us young adults for insurance purposes until the age of 29 (!!!!!) rather than expiring at 19 or when graduated from college. This would be fucking AWESOME and would help an estimated 80,000 of the 775,000 uninsured young adults across New York State. Although there are some glitches and downsides to the bill (as mentioned later in the article), in general this sounds like a great thing. Now if it would only happen by May 2010...