Friday, November 09, 2007

Health insurance travesty

Here's a John Aravosis rant from AMERICAblog:

It's time for massive federal regulation of the health care insurance industry. As a young 40-something myself, it scares the hell out of me that I have no idea what my health insurance does or doesn't cover, whether my health insurance can or can't drop me should I catch some horrible costly disease, whether I have a lifetime limit on my policy (which happened to a friend of Chris in Paris - caught something horrible, had $2m in medical payments, the company said bye-bye have a nice death), or the fact (that I just recently learned) that I lose my health insurance if I move to any other state from DC. Yep, I lose my coverage and have to start all over again, so the problems I've had with eyes, among other things, become "pre-existing conditions" and probably won't be covered. So I can never leave DC again (unless I move to Europe, where I'll be covered, but then can't ever come back to the states since I won't be covered). Then there's a member of my family who is now being told that she may have to pay $11,000 out of her own pocket, PER EYE, to have a cataract removed. She had insurance, HAS insurance, has ALWAYS had insurance, but because she changed employment a few years back, her insurance changed, and her eye problems may now be excluded pre-existing conditions - sorry! So it's potentially looking like $11k per eye or go blind at the age of 50. "Socialized medicine" ain't looking so bad when the alternative is being middle-class and going blind at 50. What is wrong with our country?

That's bad. That's really bad. And you know something else? John linked to an article about an insurance company that gives out bonuses to its employees according to how many policy holders the employees CANCELLED. That's not just bad; that's evil. You can read about it here.

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