Observations, June 28, 2017
I watch the debate on the health care system with a certain amount of frustration. I remember the days when I was earning enough to pay for health insurance and my own reactions to the way the insurance companies treated us. I recall spending at least a $1000 a month for insurance that we rarely used. We were fortunate enough not to have many illnesses, and certainly nothing that required major expense. Yet we were placed into a high risk pool and paid a lot more for our insurance than we probably ought to. When I was employed by a major corporation and had health insurance provided by my employer, I never knew what they were paying. I only found out how much it was when I got laid off and had to access COBRA insurance. Then I found out how expensive insurance was.
The policy I got when COBRA ended was cheaper, but it was still expensive. In addition, it excluded a pre-existing condition my spouse had, which meant that if there were ever any problems, we would have to pay the entire medical bill ourselves.
I had never been satisfied with the pre-ACA health care environment, and quite frankly, most people who have medical insurance through their employers have no reason to even think about insurance issues. They are part of a risk pool that is large enough to allow low-risk and high-risk employees to all get insurance.
When you are self-employed, as I was, you're part of a much smaller risk pool and you pay a lot more for often less insurance.
I would like to see a health-care system in which the government is not a major player, and I would like to see a health-care system in which insurance companies are not the major player. I don't know what kind of system that would be, but I would like to hope that people who are concerned with both providing help to everyone and people who are concerned with keeping the costs as low as possible could get together and come up with something that balances the two conflicting goals. The problem we have with the ACA is that it was largely formulated by people in one camp; the problem we have with the current Republican health plans is that they are formulated by people in the other camp.
We really need people in both camps to get together and work out compromises.
The policy I got when COBRA ended was cheaper, but it was still expensive. In addition, it excluded a pre-existing condition my spouse had, which meant that if there were ever any problems, we would have to pay the entire medical bill ourselves.
I had never been satisfied with the pre-ACA health care environment, and quite frankly, most people who have medical insurance through their employers have no reason to even think about insurance issues. They are part of a risk pool that is large enough to allow low-risk and high-risk employees to all get insurance.
When you are self-employed, as I was, you're part of a much smaller risk pool and you pay a lot more for often less insurance.
I would like to see a health-care system in which the government is not a major player, and I would like to see a health-care system in which insurance companies are not the major player. I don't know what kind of system that would be, but I would like to hope that people who are concerned with both providing help to everyone and people who are concerned with keeping the costs as low as possible could get together and come up with something that balances the two conflicting goals. The problem we have with the ACA is that it was largely formulated by people in one camp; the problem we have with the current Republican health plans is that they are formulated by people in the other camp.
We really need people in both camps to get together and work out compromises.
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