I am sharing our story and hope it assists OneCareNow.org with SB840.

I am very committed to seeing universal health care in California and the US.

I see everyone, across party lines wants this in place.

My husband and I had played everything by the rules. We are both highly educated and high wage earners- he as a computer engineer working in the wireless industry in Silicon Valley, and I’m a psychologist coach working with businesses. We have done everything by the book- had full health insurance coverage, etc.

We went to Orlando with our infant son for a vacation. And shockingly my baby boy became ill to the point of vomiting non-stop for three days. Apparently there was a stomach virus causing havoc with a lot of children. We went to the Urgent Care clinic in Orlando, and were one step away from invasive procedures in the hospital because of how serious my son’s condition became. It was very scary, however, we felt fortunate for our physician at the Urgent Care Clinic.

When we got back to California Blue Shield refused to pay for the emergency care of our baby boy. I was in total shock from this. If Health Insurance cannot cover healthy people with no history of health problems when there is an emergency, then what’s the point of even having health nsurance? I actually had to waste many, many hours fighting with Blue Shield to get my son’s emergency visits covered. And the reason for this? Because we had emergency treatment in an urgent care clinic, rather than in a documented emergency room! You would not believe the amount of runaround I got from trying to contact Blue Shield customer service representatives. Some of whom were shocked by our story, and yet it would still get lost in their system.

It took me a year to finally get Blue Shield to pay for the emergency bill, and they didn’t even pay for the whole thing. With the amount of money we have chucked out as healthy people to health insurance companies, this is a real shame. And given I had to fight when I was healthy and financially secure, it pains me to think of people with health challenges and less finances having to exert their energy for what is humanely due to them. It’s time for us all to fight for universal health care as the morally right thing to do for each other, and we will hold a mighty political stick against anyone who gets in the way of this.

Helping people achieve personal and professional success.

Dr. Neera Puri