A View From the Losing Side of Health Care

[eridani]

Or, how having insurance can prevent you from having access to health care.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacqueline-dooley/a-view-from-the-losing-si_b_8499202.html

For the last three hours I've been crunching numbers, trying to figure out how not to pay $600 to $800 a month for a health insurance policy that won't cover any medical expenses until I've paid anywhere from $7000 to $9000 in deductibles. Then, even if the deductible is met, I'd only get partial benefits until I pay an out of pocket maximum ranging from $11,000 to $14,000. I'd reach these totals only from a catastrophic health event - a hospitalization, emergency room visit, or devastating diagnosis.

I finally conclude that I have no choice. I'll be paying for the promise of a service that I'm not likely to use in 2016. I'll be responsible for all of physician visits, medications, labs and most tests. I'm in this position because I'm one of the 200,000 people who lost coverage when Health Republic Insurance was forced to close its doors this month.

Some months, after I pay my insurance premium, I don't have more than a few hundred dollars in the bank. Okay, it's most months. That's what kept me from going to the dentist when my jaw started to ache and my tooth started to throb. I'd just paid out of pocket for my regular cleaning and check up and I'd had no cavities. I didn't want to pay another $150 and I figured the pain would pass. I was wrong. My top left molar had cracked from clenching my jaw in my sleep, something I'd started doing since my daughter's diagnosis. I could've gotten a night guard a few months earlier, but it was $500 and I put it off.

I feel, not for the first time, like I'm being harvested for my premium payments, culled like wheat in a field. I do the math. If 38 million people all pay $800 a month, that's 30.4 billion dollars. What if we all stopped paying our premiums all at once? What if we just...stopped and instead created a big fund to breathe life into the healthcare co-ops that are shutting down, leaving people like me with few to no options. Do I sound like a socialist? I don't care.

I hate insurance companies. I loathe their existence. They serve no purpose other than to make their shareholders happy and their executives rich. They are the reason that healthcare is a losing battle in this country. They're the reason we don't have a public option.

[newfie11]

1. This is horrific

I had no idea what Obama care costs.
Reading the cost of simply buying insurance blows me away. $800 a month and it doesn't pay until you owe $8000 is insane.

This needs to be a big push during elections. America needs at minimum what Canada has.

I have ChampVA through my husband a Vet. It's free and with Medicare I need no supplement.
We would never be able to afford Obama care!

[eridani]

2. The thing is, most people will never get expensively sick

In every age demographic, 5% of that demographic accounts for half of all health care expenses, and 15% for 85% of expenses. Which means that the healthy 85% can get by for a considerable amount of time thinking that they have good insurance. That has as much value as their opinions about how good their fire extinguishers are.

[newfie11]

5. Probably

But having worked in level one trama hospitals I can say just one car wreck, boating accident, or even old age can lead to totals exceeding beyond anyone but the Kochs ability to pay off.

Then there's cancer and treatment is extremely expensive and may need to be repeated more than once if it returns.

We need what Canada has. Back in the late 80s I lived in the border and being in medical then I had heard horror stories about wait times in Canada.

I asked the Canadians I came across what they thought of their healthcare.

Everyone of them loved it and would never want our system. They agreed things needed to be approved upon ( like wait time) and to my knowledge it has.

[handmade34]

3. I also dislike insurance companies

and understand this is one person's experience (there are other horror stories)…

but to be fair there are many happy, good news stories about the ACA. Not everyone pays $800/month with a $8000 deductible. One of the unfortunate things about the ACA is it isn't good news for everyone it does help many people though


http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-stories/

[HereSince1628]

4. The medicaid state op-out created an awful patchwork

that handed conservative legislatures a club with which to bludgeon people under the poverty level.

All the happy good news stories about the ACA sours on the entrenchment of that patchiness. The stories look a lot like..."We've got ours, that opt-out thingy is your problem".

[hobbit709]

13. Any time the insurance companies get what they want, the people will get screwed.

And now they expect you to pay for the lubricant too.

[Enthusiast]

12. Bernie needs to place more emphasis on the differences and advantages of single payer.

The argument is clear. All the single payer systems are better and far cheaper.

Yes, single payer systems eliminate fat cat waste but fat cat waste doesn't serve but a very few anyway.

[Vinca]

6. I just had a flashback to 2004.

That's the year our health insurance went to triple our mortgage payment with a giant deductible and we had to go naked. This is why we need single-payer, everyone covered, no questions asked, no not seeing the doctor when you suspect you have something serious because you can't afford the deductible. Obamacare needed a public option so people wouldn't be victimized by insurance companies. It will only get worse.

[Doctor_J]

7. complete disaster. in an honest rendering, the president's main "accomplishment" will have been

to increase the fascists control over the citizens.

[Enthusiast]

11. Sadly agree.

[JEB]

8. Pretty much my situation. nt

[LWolf]

9. This is what my insurance has been for decades now.

The premiums have continued to increase every year, with or without the ACA.

[Enthusiast]

10. Kicked and recommended to the Max! You hate the insurance companies? Me too.

I would remind you that U.S. health insurance companies do not contribute anything to health care. They are a strictly undeserving PARASITIC middle man taking a cut of "FREE MONEY".

We must enact a single payer health care system, a system that does not permit any sort of profit taking.

The pharmaceutical companies, the medical services industry and the insurance industry are the reason we have this health care system that is massively expensive and less effective than those of the rest of the industrialized world.

The corporations will wish they had the ACA back. We need to make them squeal.