My feeling about our country’s current state of health care is nothing less than frightening for myself and my family. Falling in the mid-range of the mid-life stage with the cards stacked against me only places additional stress on my already stressful life. My employer does not offer health insurance for his employees, and even though my husband carries me on his health insurance through his employer, there is virtually no job security, which means we both could lose the only health insurance we have, if he loses his job. Luckily, we are both in good health, but the stacked cards I was referring to earlier are our family health history. Both of us have the three leading causes of death: cancer, heart disease and stroke looming over us, compliments of our gene pool. Nearly six years ago, I was in a multi-vehicle car accident that put me in the hospital for several days and in and out of physical therapists’ and chiropractor’s offices since. I was able to get back to my favorite past time within a year, running, and even ran my first marathon just three years ago. Three months following the race, I became very ill which required hospitalization both in- and out-patient for three months. Even with both of our health insurance companies kicking in, our out-of-pocket was in the thousands. I had lost my full-time job after the accident forcing me to rely on credit cards, and to ultimately exhaust all of my 401K funds that I had planned to use for my retirement. One of the reasons I worked for that employer was the benefits. Because I have been unable to find a full-time job, and the private office in which I am currently employed has no medical benefits, I am totally dependent on my husband’s health insurance. Had we been living in Japan, we would not have had to worry about losing our insurance even if we had lost our jobs. Everyone there is covered just like in the U.K. The difference is that Japan's healthcare is not paid through tax revenue like the U.K.'s. The Japanese people pay into a social insurance fund, so had I lost my job while living there, I would have had health insurance through the community insurer. In Germany, where the premiums are based on income, and the employer pays half, if I had lost my job, I would have stayed in the same insurance system. The similarity between Japan and Germany is that Japan has a health ministry and Germany has a "sickness fund". Both negotiate with the doctors and medical providers respectively on standard/universal fees. Even though the U.K. is the world leader in preventive medicine, Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Their healthcare systems work and neither make profits. I beleive universal coverage would work in the U.S. if everyone would be willing to not make a profit simply to give everyone "the basic human right to healthcare", as is the philosophy in Switzerland. My husband has 6 more years before he is entitled to his full retirement benefit package which may or may not include health insurance. If we end up with no health insurance, we will be an uninsured couple for 5.5 years before we will be eligible for Medicare benefits. That is what scares me the most. One of the reasons I am continuing my education is to further my career that will hopefully lead to a full-time job with benefits. My husband and I take primary preventive measures by eating healthy, exercising regularly, and not smoking. We both also take secondary preventive measures by getting annual physicals, screening exams/tests, and doing whatever we can to reduce our stress, including weekly visits to a massage therapist. In 18 more years, according to New Dimensions in Women’s Health (Alexander, 2010 ), I will be among the one in four women who will be over the age of 65 living in the U.S., and if I live twenty years after that, I will be one of the 18 million women over the age of 85 projected to be living in the U.S. I just hope and pray our country’s health care system makes some serious changes long before that, because I don’t want to be a burden to my husband if he outlives me, or to my daughter if I become unable to care for myself before medicare does. I feel like all I have to look forward to is my medicare benefits. How sad is that. Question is, will there be funds in the medicare system to take care of me(or anyone)if I make it to 2030.