Ataxia management

Much like other chronic illnesses successfully managing genetic cerebellar ataxia requires some out-of-pocket expenses that insurance does not cover. For example, Medicare does not pay for a full-on physical therapy treatment; so patients sommetimes have to pay some out of pocket.

What does all this mean? Long-term management of any chronic illness requires money and resources.

We aret he only country where medical insurance is connected to our jobs? why?  like a lot of life, it was a series of unintended consequnces :

The big events leading to this happened during World War II. During World war II, many eligible workers were diverted to military service, and the nation was facing a severe labor shortage. Economists feared that businesses would keep raising salaries to compete for workers, and that inflation would spiral out of control as the country came out of the Depression. To prevent this, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9250, establishing the Office of Economic Stabilization which froze wages. Businesses were not allowed to raise pay to attract workers.  As a response, businesses began to use benefits to compete-specifically, they offered more, and more generous, health care insurance.

Another event happened in 1943- the Internal Revenue Service decided that employer-based health insurance expenses should be exempt from taxation. This made it cheaper to get health insurance through a job than by other means. Unfortunately, employers and employees didn’t have any incentive to cut or control costs since there was a tax benefit. In response to this (among other reasons) Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965 to benefit the elderly, children and the disabled( a big reason was that a lot of elders retired, were no longer insured, and ended up in poverty).

Unfortunately a lot of folks who get diagnosed with genetic ataxia become unemployed for many reasons-balance and speech issues, wheeelchair use and depend on Social Security and Medicare which leads to a lot of out-of-pocket expenses.

So the moral of this: your zip code dictates your outcomes better than your gennetic code.