Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Health Care-less

I am an "insured" American.  My job provides me with a health insurance plan that provides absolutely nothing; until I have paid my $2000 deductible for medical care and $1100 deductible for prescriptions. Then I "only" pay 20% of the inflated cost of the "care" I receive.  Don't worry though, the most I can pay "out of pocket" is $6000.  Might as well be a million.  I don't have $6000.  Sure, if I get cancer or have a heart attack, $6000 is a small price to pay for my treatment (if they don't find some way to cancel me) but what about catching diseases early and getting some antibiotics before a cold turns into bronchial infection and pneumonia.  With this kind of "insurance", I can't afford to take my kids to the Dr. unless I have at least $50 in my pocket.  Sometimes, that is not possible.   For that "benefit" I only pay $20 per month.  So, the problem I have is, if I have not paid any of my deductible and I go into anaphylactic shock from eating a piece of shrimp that somehow found it's way into my sweet and sour chicken, that trip to the E.R. is going to cost me $2000.  How is that insurance exactly?  The CEO of the company I work for recently sent an e-mail down to all team members that "explained" why our deductibles were going up (again).  ObamaCare.  And then made the statement "The purpose of health insurance should be to protect us from serious situations rather than pay for our routine health care costs,"  Did I mention we are "Self -insured".  So, basically our company has become an insurance company.  Of course insurance companies don't like the new Health care regulations.  It dips into their profits.  Requiring them to pay for Mammograms and Prostate exams and other useless preventative procedures.  You know, the things that could actually reduce overall healthcare costs in this country.  In 1998, I had good insurance.  The comprehensive kind that charged me a $10 copay on visits and $10 an prescriptions.  I am pretty sure insurance companies were profitable during that time.  Not profitable enough apparently.  During the next 10 years I saw my insurance get worse and worse due to de-regulation, fraud and greed.  Now that we have a president that is trying to stop that decline and get us back on track, they want to say our insurance is expensive because of Obama.  That is not ignorance, that is deceitful. If you have a better idea then let's here it, but to blame Obama for the state of healthcare is wrong.

1 comment:

  1. You are right on target with the deceitfulness of tagging our healthcare reform Obamacare and blaming it for what is wrong. I cannot believe that people would rather have big insurance companies regulating their cost. My medical bills for this year have reached $100,000 but my out of pocket was 2500. I pay about $100 a month for my insurance. Some of the procedures are very expensive when they shouldn't be. I have had events billed for say $4000 and it is discounted to $1500 and it should cost $100. It is a game they play with numbers and the average working class American cannot afford to play.

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