Universal Health Care or It's No Bailout if it Solves the Problem

The Most Effective Preventive Medicine

The Third Ring of Health Insurance Hell

It seems to me that the health insurance industry is broken all the way to the bank.

If I were to have taken all the money I have paid for health insurance over the last 36 years and put it in an old sock every month I could now own a fairly substantial building. Instead I have an ancient empty sock and our health insurance company has the building. And it’s quite a large good-looking building.

What’s worse I continue to pay every month for a policy that has a deductible of $5,000 for each event. You heard right, that’s not per year but per event. I didn’t sign up for that, they just slowly but surely moved me into the third ring of health insurance hell.

Yet I continue to pay.

What kind of fool am I? The kind who seems to be able to afford health insurance but can’t pay for the health care I need.

Meanwhile the health insurance company plunders my bank account every month. And annually they raise their fees 8-14%.

You may as well hear the bad news from me; I’m a cancer survivor and a type 2 diabetic. I feel comfortable telling you that because the Hippa laws allowed every insurance company in the world access to my medical history. Sure there was an elaborate stage play of pharmacies trying to protect our information. This was for the gullible among us who believe Hippa had something for the little guy.

And what do I get for my money every month? Well, they use their size to negotiate a fee with the medical profession for their services.

What if I didn’t have this negotiated fee? Well I have been without health insurance at one point and when I went to the hospital I found myself in what felt like a vice. I had assets but no insurance, and so the fees I was charged subsidized both the patients covered by health insurance and the indigent patients who could pay nothing.

So I sit on the knife blade of the poorly insured. I don’t believe when the chips are down I’ll get good care and yet I see the major breach in my bank account being drained for the edification of the insurance company and their minions.

Did you ever stop and think what percentage of Americans work for the insurance industry? It shocked me when I was told 10% of Americans work in the insurance industry. If I worked for the industry I’d be embarrassed.

The state of Florida even has an insurance commissioner and when you phone and discuss any kind of problem with your insurance carrier they are quick to let you know that the insurance commissioners office was established to stop insurance fraud (i.e. to protect giant insurance companies from their customers). They already have lawyers, lobbyists, and elected officials in all varieties, why do they need a taxpayer paid government official? Isn’t that overkill? When you try to stand up to an insurance company you already feel like David without any stones for his sling.

So what does the insurance industry do?

1. It gives us peace of mind.
2. It allows us to hold a mortgage so the banks and other mortgage holders will be protected.
3. It makes money by shuffling a mountain of paper through a mountain of computers.
4. It replaces our health if it’s lost.
5. It employees 10% of the American population to shuffle paper and tell policy holders, "no."

Well one out of five is not bad. It’s awful.

And it’s not as though health insurance isn’t costing us an arm and a leg (sometimes literally) We pay 16% of our Gross Domestic Product for health care. That’s a higher percentage than any other nation. And 41% of working-age adults are paying off accrued medical debt. Yet the United States is 29th in the world in infant mortality and 48th in life expectancy!

Talk about a squeaky wheel.

Teddy Roosevelt, in 1912, recognized the need for universal health care in the United States.

Resolving the health care crisis and providing a boost to the security of every ordinary American would help the economy. And it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers 700 billion dollars.

If Iraq has it worked out, and Canada has it worked out, and all the countries of the European Common Market have it worked out, why don’t we?

Aren’t we the innovators? Aren’t we the people who leave our borders to bring democracy to the less democratic?

What could be a more democratic issue than adequate, affordable health care?

Could it be that the health insurance industry doesn’t want it resolved? Could it be that big pharma likes the current system? Could it be that someone in the medical industry wants the system that we have? I hope not.

Don’t count on our representatives in Washington helping with this problem as they and their families have the best health insurance guaranteed for the rest of their lives.

A good start to solving this whole issue might be taking away the health care of every elected official and their family and make them go out into the marketplace and find and pay for their own policy. Then they would begin to understand part of what the citizens of this country are facing.

When I went through surgery and six months of chemotherapy I was fortunate to have a loving wife who would battle our health insurance company because she had to fight for everything in the policy we had paid for over a twenty year period. I honestly believe her fight was more difficult and stressful than the one I fought to survive. Then when the health battle was over they doubled our policy cost every year until they rooted out the cancer – me.

Where’s the dark comedy in this? Perhaps I should run for political office with my entire platform being, "Vote for me – I need the health

insurance."

Here’s where it gets darkly comical. I went to the emergency room a few weeks ago. They promptly triaged my health insurance card and had a hearty laugh. And I waited, and waited and…

A friend of mine with a potentially fatal brain aneurysm had almost the same experience except he woke up in the basement of the hospital, disoriented, dressed in his skivvies with a discharge note taped to his wrist.