We have the best medical care in the world, right? You’ve heard and read that claim many times, I’m sure.

And we do have some amazing health care. What seems to be the problem is not the care, it’s the insurance.

What if you had a chronic medical condition and knew what you needed in terms of care to address your condition, but you couldn’t get that help?

The medical people you see won’t take you on as a patient because of your insurance. The elected officials from whom you seek some sort of intervention won’t help you either.

What do you do?

I’m sitting in a small apartment with a woman I’ll call Kathy. She presents me with piles of paperwork detailing her efforts to receive treatment. She has had this condition since the 1980s and still can find no relief.

The doctors who have been willing to see her have explained that MassHealth and Medicare does not pay an adequate amount for the work that needs to be done.

It is a classic Catch-22. You have to have health insurance, right? As a retiree she is on MassHealth and Medicare. Neither apparently pays enough nor fast enough to the medical professionals.

So what is the point of having that insurance?

She also signed with a health care system in order to try to get medical assistance as well, but has had problems getting the promised care. I contacted the organization and a spokesperson said he would be willing to take up her case with them.

She just told me that after making 102 phone calls she was finally able to get her identification card for that service.

Kathy explained to me that in 1984 she started feeling pain on her left side of her jaw after a local dentist did tooth restoration work. The result was waking up to headaches and numbness on the left side of her face.

Subsequent treatments by other dentists included filing down her teeth twice.

She developed a case of cranial mandibular joint dysfunction order. Simply put her jaw does not rest normally in its joint and collapses. This condition not only make speaking and eating difficult and painful, it also pulls the neck out of alignment and affects her eyes.

It’s like a house of cards – remove one card and the house goes down.

“At the very beginning I never thought I’d be disabled because I needed dentistry,” she told me.
Nothing worked to relieve her pain. She told another reporter years ago, “A dentist is used to treating teeth not mouths. They should have a basic understanding of the mandibular movement and how teeth form tempro-mandibular articulation and how these factors relate to the physiology of the neuromuscular components of the head, neck and jaw.”

She has done much research about her condition.

As you are speaking to Kathy she stops in conversation to manipulate her jaw. She is in pain. She shows me a small plastic device when placed in her mouth gives her some temporary relief. She explains that with the device in her mouth and keeping her mouth open she can alleviate the pain. This allows her to take walks that she loves.

At this point in her life, she knows she needs treatment from a maxillofacial surgeon. Her condition is not something a dentist can fix.

“I lost a kidney because of my blood pressure because all I went through,” she added.
She tells me that she was an active person and she tries to remain one today. She lost two jobs because of her medical condition and she lost her car as well.

The constant pain she endures, though, defines her life. I met with Kathy for about an hour. There is only so long she can stand and there is only so long she can speak before pain and fatigue sets in.
She has been fighting this fight for years, first with Medicaid. She used Western Mass. Legal Services to try to address this problem with the aid of an attorney. She showed me a letter the late Congressman Silvio Conte wrote on her behalf in 1990 when Medicaid denied her claim. Conte worked to try to secure the funding for 18 months and looked like he would succeed. Conte’s death in February 1991 stopped that fight.

She recently appealed to Sen. Elizabeth Warren but did not receive any assistance. At least 20 times she contacted her office and they did not return her calls.

Kathy’s plight is in many ways not unusual. How many times have you heard of and experienced an insurance company denying payment for a treatment? It has happened in my family.

How many local events are conducted to raise funds to pay for someone’s medical care? I see them quite often. We’ve run many stories about people staging such events to help loved ones or neighbors.

Take a look at social media and once again you see many people using crowd sourcing to obtain funds for medical reasons.

I hope people start to realize the health insurance crisis in this country has not gone away. The discussion has been set aside. We need to revive it.

In the meantime, the reason I wrote this column is to see if there is anyone in our area who is willing to help this woman. If you would like more information, contact me at news@thereminder.com and I’ll put you in touch.