Medi-Cal and My Wary Heart

Signing up for Insurance Was the Easy Part

I come from heart attacks the way some people come from farming families. If not a proud lineage, ours is sure a vast one. It cost me both parents—my dad had two at 50 and lived another 25 years, but my mom’s killed her outright at 52—three uncles, both grandfathers. There have also been two mitral valve transplants, two abdominal aortic aneurysms, and more bypasses than I can honestly recall.

All of this came up recently, when for the first time in many years I enrolled in
Medi-Cal Insurance, courtesy …