My WHY: The System That Failed My Father

Just shy of early Social Security eligibility, at 61 and 10 months, my father peacefully drifted away in his own bed in Maine. As a lobster fisherman his entire adult life, he lived on his own terms. The wonders of the sea and his respect for mother nature meant every day was well lived, even if his labor of love took a toll on his body.

Dad had a family history of heart issues. But in the end, I believe the most damning factor that shortened his life was the stress of his medical debt—and a system that failed him as he grew older. His story cemented my resolve to work toward a society where aging with dignity isn’t just a stroke of luck.

Dad piled up medical bills quickly. At just 37, he had his first open heart, quadruple bypass surgery. Later, in his 40s and 50s, he had additional heart tune-ups. As a self-employed fisherman on a modest income with basic catastrophic health insurance coverage, his medical bills were all on him.

Over the years, he became resourceful in managing his cash flow and debt on the plastic safety net. He would pay one minimum payment with one credit card, ask for a payment plan from a health care provider, and then pay the other bill with a different credit card. It was a Jenga game of budgeting.?

Toward his last year, doctors suggested he shouldn’t fish anymore, as the strain on his increasingly weak heart was taking months off his life. His whole life was being a lobster fisherman, nevermind the need for income to address his mounting medical bills. But his son was set to marry in the Fall, and he was determined to make it to the wedding. But by July, he passed away.

As the eldest, I was executor of his estate—estate being a relative term. It was no secret that my job was to get in front of the debt collectors, so my newly widowed mother would not have to contend with them. As I settled into “mission control” (my dad’s makeshift office of filing cabinets and paperwork galore) to build a spreadsheet to track my progress from afar, I found my dad kept impeccable records. He had every statement logged.

He had NEVER missed a payment. He had even paid off some of the health systems, but to what end? When I called his life insurance providers, I learned he had cashed out both products that year, only to pay off medical debt.

I also learned in the piles of paperwork that he had applied for and was denied Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)—two safety net programs designed to support hardworking people like him. The Social Security Administration (SSA) rejected his SSDI application because his self-employed status had him falling short of the quarters needed to qualify. Another letter from SSA claimed that the household income—which consisted of my mother’s wages as a restaurant worker—made him ineligible for SSI. Meanwhile, I worked on public benefits access at my job down in Washington, DC. He never asked for advice, and he never asked me for a dime.

He also never told us how bad it was. The stress. The juggle. With my mother’s wages, they made too much to qualify for the subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), yet too little to catch up with the mounting medical debt.

In the end, it took the creditors only a few keystrokes to wipe away the debt that filled my dad with so much anxiety for years. They waived everything because his checking account was empty, and there were no other assets to draw upon, as my mother is still living in the family house. All I had to do was fax or email the death certificate, and it all dissolved.

Resolving the debt was that easy for the creditors. Yet, my father’s final months were filled with the stress of just scraping by. And I was robbed of more time with the first man in my life because of the toll of trying to pay for the privilege of staying alive.

I share my very personal family story not because it is unique. Unfortunately, it is far too widely experienced. GoFundMe reports that more than 250,000 medical fundraisers are added a year and raise $650 million annually. Given that the United States has the highest overall health care costs in the developed world, this should not be a shock. Since 2009, average family premiums have increased 54%, and workers’ contribution have increased 71%—several times more quickly than wages (26%) and inflation (20%), according a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

People are resourceful, but crowdsourcing is not a solution. Policy needs to catch up. When the health care apparatus starts to take years off your life instead of adding life to your years, we have a problem. We have a system that is clearly broken for far too many hardworking Americans.

That’s why I’m so proud to be back at the National Council on Aging (NCOA), where we believe that aging with dignity shouldn’t be a stroke of luck or only available to the privileged few. Frankly, I have always found aging to be a social justice issue - those able to enjoy the quality and the quantity of years should be equitably shared. At NCOA, we’re working toward a just society that empowers every person to age with dignity, purpose, and security.

My dad deserved that. Our children deserve that. We all do.