Monday, May 08, 2006

Bend and Grab

Well, the "health" insurance company just jacked the premium by another thousand dollars a year. This is your reward for surviving another year with insurance-based health care. Congratulations! Being a year older, you are now more likely to get sick, so we're going to charge you a boatload more money for the same inadequate shit we were already charging you too much for last year.

How much longer are the citizens of this country going to put up with such a doomed system?

It does send a clear message that if you have not managed to become wealthy, or made yourself valuable enough to qualify for what we call benefits, you deserve to die, and die poor at that.

One or two people quitting it will only mean that they shrivel away as the system intended. If you want to change the game, many thousands of people will have to refuse to play it.

My health is worse since I have been trying to scrape up the money for health insurance premiums. And, with that money gone, I just don't have the money to go to a doctor. If I really am sick I can't afford a bunch of expensive testing not covered by the lame-ass policy I can afford. If I'm not really sick, it was a waste of money and time.

Ah well, suck it up. We're really just here to die as bravely as we can. If you happen to enjoy yourself while waiting, good for you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There are some of us who think that maybe, just maybe, we are getting nearer to the window where we can step off the roller coaster of having a hugely expensive health care system that still fails to provide decdent coverage. We can design a system,probably a single payer system, that covers more people, and is actually designed to keep them healthy, rather than just responding to illnesses that could be avoided. Why do this? Look at the facts. We're not as healthy as our counterparts in England. Our infant mortality rate is the same as Slovakia. Sure, we've got wiz-bang tests available, but when people can't afford them, who cares?

I think maybe if enough middle class type people find themselves unable to afford health care, the time might be ripe for a populist reaction that might be able to coutneract the lobbying voice of pharma, the insurance ance industry, etc. It may be enough that folks still technically have care, but are personally paying more and more for less. Certainly the employers are getting loud and grumpy, but that's only pushed us to talk of a "market based system," which really isn't a solution here. That's what we've got - -what makes us think that individuals will be better health care consumers than major corproations that are spending, literally, millions?

Couple a burdened population with, say, a flu pandemic, that, while hopefully not killing many, still manages to show the huge flaws/disparities/inadequacies in our current sytem on a nationwide basis, and maybe, just maybe, the time will be right. Now I don't think a bunch of regional disasters will do the trick. We've already stopped caring, colelctively, about last year's hurricane victims. Their plight has no immediacy in our daily lives. So, too, would the east coast soon forget if we got socked with a major earth quake out here. Sadly, it has to be something that impacts a wide swath of the nation.

Our system doesn't work. We aren't getting basic care to many. Even those thst get care, have an incredible likelihood of suffereing from medicla errors. Our system is set up in a way that incents hiding those erros, rather than solving the problems.

This stinks. There's got to be a better way. Hopefully, the time is right to truly try to find one.