I read this over at Meg Hourihan’s blog and am still shocked that people disagree with health care reform.
I haven’t had employer-provided health care in over ten years, which means I’ve been paying for individual or small group insurance for myself and now my family every month. Every year my premiums increase by 30%, so I’ve changed providers going from crappier to crappier policies until now we’ve got the cheapest I can find. This "cheap" policy is costing over $1300 a month and is an HMO, so it only covers in-network providers. Because it’s not a very good insurance company, very few providers take it. For my OB/GYN I just pay out-of-pocket for my appointments.
Two things now: my pediatrician referred my son to an ear-nose-throat specialist to check his hearing. None of his referrals take our insurance, so I called the company, used their website to pick a random doctor, called the doctor and was told they didn’t take it, was transferred to another doctor, was transferred again and finally ended up with a fax line picking up my call after fifteen minutes on the phone. After two hours calling various people, I gave up and am now going to pay out-of-pocket for the referred doctor for Ollie tomorrow.
Some time last week I think I stepped on a piece of glass. There’s something in my heel and I’ve soaked it and squeezed and tweezed but whatever it is, I can’t get it. It’s been throbbing for a week. My primary care physician can’t see me for two weeks. Their urgent care center takes my insurance but I have to make them my PCP to have the visit covered. Another local urgent care facility doesn’t take my insurance. So basically if I want to address this before May 24 and not pay out-of-pocket, I need to go to the ER and it’s a $50 copay.
This is after paying $1300/month. I have written about Canadian medicare before and while it’s not perfect, it’s a lot better than what Meg describes.
I wonder how much better Health Care in the States would be if the money spent advertising hospitals and HMO’s and the commissions paid to Health Care salesmen were spent healing people?