My Turn: John Lipponen: What happened after I died

I died in my living room on Memorial Day.

I had what doctors call "The Widowmaker," the granddaddy of all heart attacks: 100% blockage of my main artery supplying blood to my heart. I went into cardiac arrest while watching TV on the sofa with my wife.

For 20 minutes I was dead. Gone. Forty-five years old and show over. My wife performed CPR on me and brought me back until the paramedics arrived. Lots of people claim to have an angel watching over them; I'm lucky to be married to mine.

After emergency surgery and a week's stay in the hospital, I was able to return home and begin the healing process. And that's when the nightmare truly began.

A little over a week into my recovery, I received a letter from my insurance provider, explaining that I had received medical services considered "out of network" and that it would not be paying the entire $2,773.06 due but would pay $766 of it, and the City of Pawtucket could bill me for the remaining $2007.06. These "out of network" expenses were the emergency medical technicians and ambulance ride to the hospital.

Because a Pawtucket rescue helped keep me alive that night, the insurer would not foot the entire bill. I would have to -- the now out-of-work, recovering heart attack survivor. Let's stop here for a moment and ponder the logic here. Think about this. In the insurance company's view, what should have transpired that awful night was, instead of my wife calling 911 and having the rescue dispatched, she should have gone on the insurer's website and searched for "in network" rescue providers in my area so as to not incur any potential additional costs to the plan.

Precious life-saving minutes would have been lost and the outcome would have been quite different. I wouldn't be writing this. I wouldn't be doing anything. Ever.

What happened with my insurance company is what's happening all over the country. It is a symptom of our broken American health-care system, where the mighty dollar rules over the worth of a life. The Affordable Health Care Act has done very little for the average American struggling with health-care debt since it was signed into law in 2010. And the numbers are staggering. Collectively, $81 billion is owed in medical debt.

You can see it in the daily heartbreak of our senior citizens having to choose whether they eat today or pay for their medications. Or the true story of the woman who was raped, went to the ER where the rape kit procedure was performed, only for her to receive a bill charging her $3,000, because, again -- out of network. And yet our politicians continue to pledge to "improve health care" and "crack down on drive-thru doctors," etc. Blah, blah, vote for me.

Maybe my story isn't so unique. Maybe it isn't headline-grabbing news. But it is my story and my experience with my health-care provider, which turns out is a common experience in America. And possibly only the beginning as the bills start rolling in. I don't know. All I know is that I'm here, I survived to tell you about it.

For that I'm grateful beyond words.

John Lipponen, an occasional letter writer, writes from Pawtucket.

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