Archive: Opinions

Editorial I have lousy health insurance.  I suppose I should consider myself lucky to have health insurance at all, but it is hard to consider that because I think I pay a lot for insurance with a pretty high deductible.  The prescription medicine portion of the package is pretty good, but between co-payments, the high deductible, and the cost of the insurance itself it is enough to make a person sick!  Last year they raised the annual cost of my insurance by about 12%, more than $900 above last year's cost.

If the idea of insurance is to not have to worry at the times when you need it, then that is another measure of how my health insurance isn't good.  Every time someone in my family gets sick or injured I do worry about the cost.  And that stinks, because I want to use my worry to worry about their health.  Surely in an age when insurance companies promote preventative medicine so they don't end up having to pay out huge medical costs, they can understand that making customers worry so much creates a lot of stress.  Stress is bad for your health.  I read that in one of those 'Stay Healthy' flyers the insurance company sends from time to time.

The thing is, that just having insurance means that medical providers have to charge you a lower rate that they have agreed on for the privilege of accepting insurance.  So that is a benefit to the insured.  But those rates aren't cheap even the lesser rates.  And the bad news is that if you do have an expensive emergency as we did when a member of my family needed emergency surgery last year, you also pay pretty much that whole deductible, which is just for that person, not for others in the family.  So a week later when I found myself in Convenient Care, it added even more to the total.

The other thing I have trouble wrapping my mind around is that the less you can afford, the more you are charged for health care.  Right now we can't afford a policy with a smaller deduction, so we end up paying more.  Theoretically we're betting on not getting sick or injured, but in the reality of a family of four, you can't win no matter which side you gamble on.

I can feed my family of four on less than I pay for medical insurance and care.  I could buy a brand new car -- a modest one -- for just over two year's worth of medical insurance.  I could buy almost 9,000 iTune downloads for the cost of this year's medical insurance.  That 12% rise in my insurance was far worse than the rise in the Lansing School District property taxes last year!  The amount of actual dollars paid for medical insurance alone was significantly more than I paid in property and income taxes together.  If you include our small business's payroll taxes medical insurance was still more expensive.

Medical insurance and health care have become the worst thing I have to pay for, both in terms of overall cost and my perception of overall lack of value. And it's not going to get better.  I know my family is better off than many, but we really can't afford the insurance we have.  So if we're struggling I can only imagine how families less fortunate than we are deal with it.

I used to think it was a good thing philosophically and politically when Reagan lifted regulation on the television industry.  But now there are so many commercials and so few good choices that I believe I was wrong.  Regulation made television usable.  Television is not usable any more.  Neither is health care, and especially health insurance. 

All the politicians you listen to love to talk about reforming health care.  Wouldn't it be great if they actually actually do it?  Because at some point -- not soon, I hope -- I'm going to need a new car.

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