health insurance (Fred)

[Susan Kline]

Fred, is there something here which I've missed? Are you particularly 
unhealthy? Are you a heavy user of medical services?

You have obviously suffered great inconvenience, anxiety, expense, and 
frustration getting yourself health coverage. Is there some reason you 
couldn't just stuff some money into an account toward medical costs, 
instead of fighting one uncaring bureaucracy after another?

ON AVERAGE, health insurance HAS to cost more than the medical services, to 
pay for the infrastructure -- probably a LOT more! So if you pay a fortune 
for medical insurance, you're betting that you're going to be so much more 
unhealthy than an average person that it will make up for the large 
insurance company costs you are paying.

Also, as time goes by I find out more and more that stress all by itself is 
unhealthy. Cortisol sends all kinds of chemistry down the wrong pathways. 
If the health system is so annoying and expensive that you are getting 
stressed out over it, might it not worsen rather than improve health?

Just being a good contrarian ...

Best wishes, hoping that you aren't chronically ill ...

Susan


>1) Higher taxes for national health insurance? Well, in my own paycheck, 
>the difference between a dollar in the tax column of the pay stub and a 
>dollar in the insurance premium column is exactly nil. I take home the 
>same amount. I currently pay well over 20% of gross income for health 
>insurance. Why is that worse than paying another 20% in taxes? Can someone 
>explain?
>2) Choice. With my HMO, my choice of doctors is limited to those who are 
>affiliated (with a few minor exceptions). If I go out of town, things get 
>dicey - maybe I'm covered, maybe not. (BTW, for "I" read "my family.") If 
>my doctor gets fed up and changes affiliation, quits, or moves, I'm in a 
>bind. This happened three times in the last five years. Don't ask me how 
>many times I heard the phrase "Sorry, none of our doctors are accepting 
>new clients at this time." Bottom line, there is a bit of choice, but it's 
>very limited. Why would there be less under a national plan?
>3) Freedom. As it stands now, I'm pretty much stuck in my job until I 
>qualify for Medicare (with the assumption I want to be covered by health 
>insurance). I've been the self-employed route, and it sucks. I've had 
>MidWest National decide they would no longer work in New Mexico. Went to 
>another company via an alumni group. That firm severed ties with the 
>alumni group. Went hunting again, and this time my wife was denied 
>coverage due to supposed pre-existing conditions (I won't bore you with 
>the details, but it was specious, based largely on a couple mis-diagnoses 
>of symptoms that were later found to have simple explanations). So a large 
>part of my motivation for making my contract university work into an 
>employed situation was health insurance. (I have the one piano technician 
>job in the state of New mexico that includes health insurance). I'll just 
>mention that if you have a major illness as a self-employed, you will 
>often find yourself dropped, or your premiums bumped way up. And finding 
>another company to cover you will be a lost cause.
>4) A nameless bureaucrat deciding what care I get. Well, in my book, there 
>is very little practical difference between a civil servant bureaucrat and 
>an HMO bureaucrat. Except that if things get really bad, I could probably 
>get a congress or senate office to put a bit of pressure on the civil 
>servant - similar pressure on the HMO would only pertain if I were a major 
>stockholder. And the democratic process would write the rules and 
>regulations, as opposed to the HMO accountants.
>
><snip> (Point about socialism well taken ...)