Mara Gordon | A sickening situation

Last week, Katie Derickson got sick. Really sick.

The kind of sick when your throat hurts and your fever is soaring and all you want to do is feel better. It was only Derickson's third day at her new job at Penn's School of Social Policy and Practice, but she knew she had to see a doctor.

Like many recent college graduates, however, Derickson doesn't have comprehensive health insurance.

So what should have been a simple visit to her physician turned into an ordeal in the bureaucratic depths of the American healthcare system - an ordeal that millions of young people must constantly endure simply because they don't have steady jobs.

"I don't know what my options are. I don't know where I can go," Derickson said. "I just need to see a doctor - how can I get in front of a doctor? How can I get an appointment without jumping through a ton of hoops that cost me a lot of money?"

Derickson graduated from Haverford College in 2006 and worked in an AmeriCorps-affiliated program called Philly Fellows for one year.

Now that she's a Penn employee, she qualifies for what she calls the University's "amazing" health insurance, but that coverage doesn't kick in until after one month of employment.

The AmeriCorps program gave her limited insurance that only covered emergency care. When her fellowship ended, she purchased more "short-term cheapo crappy emergency coverage," that only covered costs upward of $2,000.

And that's what didn't cover her doctor's visits last week.

So she was on her own.

Derickson was ready to go to the emergency room, where many turn for routine appointments simply because they don't have another choice. She ended up getting a last minute appointment with a family friend and paying in cash, but many others aren't so lucky.

They wait in long lines for ER care when a normal appointment would have sufficed.

But because they don't have comprehensive insurance, they're forced to go to the one place that can't turn them away.

Even in the emergency room at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, a big sign greets visitors with this tragic proclamation: You have the right to treatment even if you cannot pay. "It's the law."

It's tragic not because I believe everyone should have to pay for emergency room visits (I do think it should be free), but precisely because most of them shouldn't be there in the first place.

Yet for an increasing number of college graduates, it seems the emergency room is the only option these days.

There are almost 50 million Americans who live without health insurance. Of that number, an estimated 13 million are young adults ages 19 to 29, an increase of two million since 2000.

Most full-time employers, of course, do provide comprehensive health insurance for their employees. According to Penn's director of Career Services Pat Rose, most Penn graduates choose jobs with corporations or big organizations that cover their healthcare needs well.

For others, like 2007 Penn alumnus Ben Weinberg, parents pay a fee to keep their children on their own insurance plans. Weinberg, a first-year medical student, said it just didn't make sense to pay more money for his school's "limiting" student plan.

But what about the people for whom neither of those choices is an option?

Someone who, in Rose's words, "wants to write a novel or compose a symphony or volunteer on a political campaign" but can't afford to pay for her parents' insurance - how is she supposed to stay healthy?

Our country's patchwork healthcare system doesn't really have an answer for those people. They're left to buy independent plans with outrageous fees attached or get day jobs at one of the few companies that covers its part-time employees well (Starbucks is one excellent example).

Many of them just bank on being healthy enough to get by without insurance and hope that nothing bad happens.

But bad things happen all the time - whether you're 23 or 80, rich or poor, a freelancer or an i-banker.

Your ability to get treatment shouldn't hinge on any of those factors.

That's why the American health insurance system needs a complete overhaul - before our generation truly suffers the consequences.

Mara Gordon is a College senior from Washington, DC. Her e-mail is gordon@dailypennsylvanian.com. Flash Gordon appears on Wednesdays.

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