This Is Why We Need Health Care Reform
Daily Kos points us to this story from a blog called Thus Spake Zuska.
My sister is a member of the fitness club where that shooting took place. It was just chance that she was not there, and not in that fitness class, the night the shooting took place. My gratefulness for her safety has been tempered by my sadness for the women who were killed and injured there.
Well, just imagine my thoughts today when I talked to my sister, and she let me know what was going on for one of the women who was shot at the fitness club. The young woman had recently graduated college and therefore had “aged out” of coverage on her parents’ health insurance. She did not have coverage provided through a job. I can’t tell you why she didn’t purchase coverage on the open market – because it was out of her financial reach, because she didn’t think she needed it (being young and healthy), who knows, maybe she had a pre-existing condition that made it impossible for her to get it (see my next post). Whatever, she didn’t have health insurance.
She is left with a hefty, hefty bill from the hospital due to the surgery and other treatment she needed because some sick fuck asshole came into her fitness club and shot her while she was minding her own business, exercising, trying to maintain her own health.
So her friends and family recently sponsored a friggin’ car wash to raise funds to pay her hospital bills. Yes. A car wash.
This is the status quo that people like Tom Coburn want to preserve. This woman should not be facing outrageous and potentially bankrupting medical bills. Let’s fix our broken health care system and leave car washes for Little League teams.
Reminds me of this:
http://shannynmoore.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/the-kennedy-option-a-matter-of-life-and-death/
Let’s not let Carper off on this either. He is de-facto supporting car washes for crime victims.
Brilliant rant, especially the introduction of the racist element in the Grand Finale:
“…and the rightwing nutjobs convince you that you are a dupe who has been made to fund the lazy, brown- and black-skinned no-good-niks who are destroying America as you know it, and who will thank you for your efforts by raping your daughters and looting your homes if given half a chance.”
Not to be critical in any way (my daughter is the same age, has just “aged out, and has a membership in a health club), but when I was her age I made a conscious decision to take a low paying civil service job with decent health care benefits, primarily for my family. I didn’t make enough to even consider joining a health club. So I ran, and exercised on a bike I bought at a thrift shop. My daughter has a good job in her chosen field, but no health care benefits. At her age, she thinks she’s immortal.
So, she can’t make a claim to LA Fitness’ insurance company? it happened in their building while attending a class she paid for…
It didn’t sound right to me, but I did find the article online for it http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/20422412/detail.html
It’s a great example of why a system that bases your insurance (and financial life) status on your employment and the generosity of your employer is insane. No one else in the civilized world does it quite this way, nor did we really intend to. It was a quirk of post-war tax law. Now, we’re stuck with a system where people’s lives are ruined because their employer decides they can’t afford to offer coverage (which they have every right to do).
My overriding hope is that sometime within my lifetime, we can get away from the employer-based system, whether it be to a nationalized system, single-payer, or just a well-regulated, fair open market. Just about anything would be better than what we have now.
I could cite hundreds of anecdotal stories about waiting for months in England for an appendectomy, but so what- the world is full of such stories, pro and con. But only a fool would trust inept government bureaucrats with their very lives; and our government is permeated with inept bureaucrats.
So, you have your own private army, police force, and diplomatic corps? Cool.
Rick, my friend, the world is permeated with inept people. The government just happens to be a part of that world, just like the rest of us.
“our government is permeated with inept bureaucrats”
As are all private businesses, including insurance companies. Here’s my favorite anecdote, since it just happened last week:
My wife has seriously high blood pressure — always has. It took years to find a mix of drugs to control it effectively, though she had a subarachnoid hemorrhage (a burst aneurysm, basically) along the way.
Last month, after five years on a week-long-dosage patch, her insurance company decided it could save a few bucks by making her switch to a time-release daily pill. It didn’t work well, causing wild swings from very low blood pressure to above normal. After a week of this she switched back, but a couple of days later had a stroke. She’s doing fine now, they expect her to regain full use (or nearly so) of her left side, but I”m still waiting to see what the bill for the five-day hospital say will cost them.
Lesson: To save a few hundred dollars, some “inept bureaucrat” wrote a protocol challenging everyone who was on a patch-based delivery system. This decision will cost the company something like $30,000.
Of course, it could have turned out better for the insurance company — she could have dropped dead instead of recovered. They insure her health, not her life.
So while Assholes Without Consciences fret about the government, I’m perfectly willing to trust my life to someone who doesn’t care about me. It sure beats trusting someone whose bonus is based on screwing me and mine out of anything that costs money.
she can’t make a claim to LA Fitness’ insurance company
I wonder if you don’t sign away alot of the ability to get them to pony up for events that happen at their club when you join.
Scott P and Geezer are right — inept people are just everywhere and the government has no monopoly on them. Anyone who has called a customer service line knows that pretty immediately.
First off, Geezer, I’m sorry to hear about your wife. I truly hope everything works out as well as it can for you.
Secondly, he did a good job of pointing out the root problem of the system, and why I’m willing to take my chances with the inept bureaucrats. The danger now comes not from inept insurance co employees, but from the ones who are very good at their jobs. And their jobs consist of finding new ways not to spend company money on paying our health care claims. With a government system (of whatever sort), at least their stated goal would be to take care of us, not their own and their CEO’s profits. Personally, I’ll take the occasionally inept public system over the well-run (for them) private system we have now.
Yes, I’m sure cR is going to opt out of Social Security and Medicare when the time comes, right?
Geezer,
Thanks for sharing your story. I hope your wife is feeling better.
I don’t want to trust my health care decisions to bureaucrats that make a profit by denying me service.
I’m not sure what conservative ideology actually is these days besides reflexive government-hating. They seem to believe that people that work for the government are more incompetent and have more evil intentions than people who don’t.
I hope your wife gets better, too, Geezer.
“…a great example of why a system that bases your insurance (and financial life) status on your employment and the generosity of your employer is insane.
Hey, nothing’s free. I contributed towards the employee health care. I had several plan options. The better the plan, the more the contribution, and I co-pay for every visit and prescription. I presume the employee offered this benefit to attract people into jobs that paid less than the private sector, likely a trade-off for the low wages. It worked then, and still does.
“No one else in the civilized world does it quite this way,…”
Does that somehow make it better or worse? It worked just fine for me, and millions of others who remained gainfully employed and contributed.
There are a lot of gainfully employed people who don’t have health insurance. I don’t remember the exact statistic, I think it’s something like 60% of employers offer insurance. Having employment tied to health care insurance traps a lot of people in jobs that may not be the best fit for them.
Our current system isn’t working just dandy as you think Miscreant. We’re paying 16% of our GDP on health care, almost double what other developed nations pay. We’re getting worse outcomes as well. Despite all this money we’re paying we still leave many people without insurance. I don’t know how anyone can say it’s working fine.
Thanks UI, the gainfully employed angle is bullshit.
Thanks for the kind wishes. She’s beaten the odds before, so I expect her to do well now that the odds are with her. I shared so people like Rick can see that everything they fear from a government-run insurance system — and that’s what we’re talking about here, government-run insurance, not government-run medicine — ALREADY EXISTS in the private sector.
It was a great point, Geezer — and do hope your wife does well. It is always interesting to see how The Best Healthcare System in the World often conspires against its customers.
And Mis knows there are alot of gainfully employed people without healthcare — Walmart employees, other retail employees, lot of those guys cutting other peoples’ grass don’t have insurance provided by their employer. And aren’t making enough money to go it it on the open market.
“Having employment tied to health care insurance traps a lot of people in jobs that may not be the best fit for them.”
It was a good fit for me. The *One Size Fits All* approach rarely works.
“Our current system isn’t working just dandy as you think Miscreant. We’re paying 16% of our GDP on health care, almost double what other developed nations pay. We’re getting worse outcomes as well. Despite all this money we’re paying we still leave many people without insurance. I don’t know how anyone can say it’s working fine.”
Again, I can only truly relate to my own employment experience. So far, the entire experience with my plan(s) has worked out “fine”. Without doubt, the rate of contributions and ever increasing co-pays are related to the cost of covering those who don’t contribute.
“… the gainfully employed angle is bullshit.”
If you have the brains or balls, please elaborate. I worked for it, paid for it, and use it when necessary. While one can cite exceptional cases on both sides of the issue, what is so hard to understand about: Get a fucking job, pull your own weight, and contribute?
“And Mis knows there are alot of gainfully employed people without healthcare — Walmart employees, other retail employees, lot of those guys cutting other peoples’ grass don’t have insurance provided by their employer.”
They certainly know that going in to those jobs. I cut my own grass.
Mis, I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the whole “nothing’s free” and “I contributed towards the employee healthcare” thing. By “the generosity of your employer” I didn’t mean that they pay the whole thing. But do you know how much your employer pays towards your insurance? If you do, you’re ahead of most people. Do you know how many raises you’ve lost over the past 15 or 20 years because the cost of health care has shot up? And those “several plan options” you had — those were pre-selected by your employer because they were the best ones for them. Do you know how many other choices you might have had?
My favorite, though, was “It worked just fine for me, and millions of others who remained gainfully employed and contributed.” I’ve not seen a better encapsulation of the conservative “I’ve got mine, so screw you” mantra in a long time.
The point being, of course, that these people are gainfully employed and contributing. As are lots of very small businesses — people trying to bring a great idea to market or similar. Their bad luck is to be gainfully employed by folks who don’t offer them insurance and not being in a position to pay the market rate. And the number of employers offering insurance is getting smaller, not larger.
It’s time the non-contributors contribute !!!!!!!
4…3…2…1
And what about small businesses. The GOP suppossedly has a hard on for small businesses. They routinely trot them out (usually incorrectly) as being the ones most hurt by Democratic policies. How many small businesses never got started because the potential entrepreneurs were afraid to leave their current jobs for fear of losing their health coverage? And how many small businesses closed because they couldn’t afford to offer coverage to their employees? They shouldn’t have to. They are among the hardest hit by our current system.
Exactly, Scott. I remember the GOP’s Joe the Plumber obsession, but the GOP couldn’t find a real person who would see a tax raise under the Obama plan (because there wasn’t one).
More and more businesses are dropping insurance coverage because it’s just too expensive.
h., I would certainly like to see non-contributors contribute. There’s a whole lot of Republicans sitting in Congress, drawing taxpayer funded checks and doing nothing for our country.
Actually, getting the non-contributors to contribute is kind of what the individual mandate is all about. But of course that’s socialist and probably unconstitutional, right?
“But do you know how much your employer pays towards your insurance?”
Yes, I know precisely. It was included in a pre-employment orientation. And, I also did my homework regarding all benefits.
“Do you know how many raises you’ve lost over the past 15 or 20 years because the cost of health care has shot up? And those “several plan options” you had — those were pre-selected by your employer because they were the best ones for them. Do you know how many other choices you might have had?”
Several raises lost, I’m sure, due to the rising premium costs primarily caused by the rising costs of medical care because we are paying, one way or the other, for the treatment of non-contributors. I had several choices within the program, and unlimited choices outside if none were suitable. The choices from my employer were more than adequate.
“I’ve not seen a better encapsulation of the conservative “I’ve got mine, so screw you” mantra in a long time.”
Nice spin but, more accurately… it’s the “I’ve earned mine, earn yours” mantra. Understand that concept?