“Great” news: My little sister, who is eight and a half months pregnant, just learned her husband’s employer has terminated healthcare coverage for all employees, their spouses, families, and uterine-based “masses of cells,” i.e., impending or upcoming children,* effective immediately.

Big deal? Yeah, a pretty damned big one, I think.

Sure, there’s Cobra, and the option, I believe, for the family to get coverage from my sister’s employer, her rather obvious “preexisting condition” notwithstanding and all that, but this is a tiny little company where everyone knows everyone. There is simply no conceivable way those making this cruel decision didn’t know that two of their employees, my sister and another woman (maybe more for all I know), are due to deliver within days.

God, I love capitalism. I really do. And I mean that.

Ah, but welcome to my life, sister dear: More than two years now with no health insurance whatsoever, my four -- Count `em, four! -- preexisting conditions making self-coverage a virtually unobtainable option ($2,100 a month).

(As a side note, I’m sort of embarrassed to note that it was only about two years ago that I learned Medicare doesn’t cover the costs of prescription medications. That’s just wrong.)

* Whoa! I bet I lose some links over that one!