Bob Cesca: The Health Insurance You Have Now Sucks

[Blue State Blues]

Meanwhile, your premiums are being systematically jacked up until, one day, they'll extend beyond your financial means. It's only a matter of time before an injury or illness isn't covered due to, perhaps, a mistake on your application or the whim of a corporate bureaucrat. It's only a matter of time before your policy is suddenly rescinded in lieu of your insurance provider's profit margins which, by the way, have increased by upwards of 350 percent in the last decade. Your premiums, meanwhile, have more than doubled over that same ten years while middle class wages have remained flat. Reaganomics illustrated. Health care costs are destined to finish off what remains of the American middle class. Around 60 percent of all bankruptcies are due to health care debt with 78 percent of those bankruptcies filed by people with health insurance. Again, the insurance you have sucks and it's only the beginning of the bailout. We're nowhere near the high water mark.

At the very least, and at this very moment, we're all paying a 30 percent private tax to our insurance companies. This tax isn't being spent on our family's medical care and general wellness, but instead on corporate bureaucracy and profit. For the average family contributing to around half of an annual $13,000 employer-based premium, this private tax amounts to more than a thousand dollars a year (and rising) for nothing. No guarantees against rescinding our policies. No guarantees of coverage in the event of a serious illness. No guarantees that we'll be covered for a pre-existing condition. No guarantees that our rates won't be randomly jacked up for no reason. Nothing.

Even if you work for a health insurance company, your health care sucks. WellPoint is in the process of entirely stripping a "small number" of employees of their health insurance via pink slips, and the remaining employees will have to kick in more of their paycheck towards their monthly premiums (along with the obligatory 30 percent private tax, of course). It's worth mentioning that WellPoint is under investigation for coercing their employees into lobbying Congress against health care reform. Oh, and the CEO of WellPoint earned $10 million last year. Good people.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-health-insurance-you_b_313103.html