He doesn’t consider himself a gambler, but Mike Coronella comes from a line of very healthy people, follows a very healthy lifestyle, and couldn’t afford health insurance. So he chose to live without it.

Now, Coronella finds himself in a deep financial hole. He doesn’t have the money to pay for a triple by-pass surgery that saved his life.

Even if all the doctors, hospitals, and laboratories accept negotiated rates, Coronella said it will be a long time before his family is out of debt. So far, the bills he has received amount to $65,000, not including the surgeon, the radiologist, or laboratory costs.

“I could go into medical bankruptcy, but then the doctors would not get paid,” he said. “I don’t find that acceptable. They saved my life.”

Coronella’s choice to live without health insurance seemed reasonable to the robust 45-year-old hiking guide who lives a healthy lifestyle and who, as he says, “chose the right parents.”

He comes from a long line of people who have never had heart problems – until last June when his 76-year-old father underwent emergency heart surgery.

“The risk/reward assessment was done. If you look at the food in our kitchen there’s no packaged food, no fast foods. I eat a very healthy diet,” Coronella said. “Our family has never been to McDonald’s.”

Even while absorbed in a computer game, his daughter, 11-year-old Maddie Coronella, grimaced at the mention of fast food.

“If the private [insurance] industry had done its job, I would be able to afford insurance,” Coronella said. His wife has a good job in Moab, but her employer cannot afford $12,000 per year to insure each of its employees, he said.

Still, Coronella says he does not feel like a victim.

“I feel more like a normal person whose gotten caught up in our failing health care delivery system,” Coronella said. He expresses bitterness over the fact that the federal government did not enact health care reform long ago. And Coronella blames Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch for putting the interests of the insurance industry ahead of the public’s interest.

Hatch’s website reveals a six-page list of statements made by Hatch in opposition, or attempting to amend, the health care reform bill recently passed by the Senate Finance Committee. Hatch is a “high ranking member” of that committee.

While his father’s event caused Coronella to contemplate the need for insurance he says he didn’t have a chance. His heart attack came only two months later, on Aug. 15, while he was guiding hikers in the Maze district of Canyonlands National Park.

Because he did not have insurance, Coronella hiked out of the Maze without telling his clients he was in trouble. He then waited two and a half weeks before he went to a doctor, “because I didn’t have insurance,” he said. A few days later he was undergoing surgery.

Even before Aug. 15, and following his father’s emergency, Coronella said he believes he could not have gotten insurance that would have worked. He said that even if he had immediately signed up for insurance the company would have denied coverage, because the fact that he needed surgery proves he had a pre-existing condition.

He said he had no way of knowing he had a pre-existing condition because he passed every test designed to assess his health, including pending heart trouble, with flying colors.

“The doctor said, ‘the only thing you could have done was choose your ancestors better,’” Coronella said.

The latest reports from Associated Press on national health care reform indicate that the Democratic leadership in Congress is working to combine the legislation passed by three committees in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate. Democratic congressional leaders have said they expect to pass a final bill this year.

But even if Coronella’s heart had held out for another six months or so, he may not have been any better off, he said.

“Most of the major spending provisions of the bill do not go into effect until 2013 or later – coincidentally after the 2012 presidential elections,” stated an Oct. 20 note from Hatch and included on his website.

Coronella is a long-time member of Grand County Search and Rescue. Friends in that group are planning a fund-raising dinner and auction for Dec. 7 to help Coronella pay his medical bills.