I’m sorry folks, but even with employment at a Fortune top company to work for that has, I swear, some of the best insurance I’ve ever seen, I still have trouble believing the system of today is good.
I had a family illness. Our insurance was great. But with a major event actually demonstrating what the true insurance is capable of, the out of pocket deductible cap and then the 80/20 to the max cap still leaves a family with annual bills approaching $7k for one person, or $10k for the whole household. Now, this would have been mitigated if I had time to actually save money in to the HSA account it goes with, but this hit seven months after I got the new job on probationary pay. Meaning not much was there to help.
Since I am truly lucky and grateful to be doing reasonably well, if I carried any debt at all, paying for this on top of that debt would really be a strain. In fact it is until my upcoming raise and even then we won’t have much breathing room for a year after. Especially since I just had some HOA mandatory landscaping done and then received a surprise medical bill in the mail that, combined, is making my comfortable credit card limit not so comfortable. Let’s place an average-average family into that scenario where both work hard and bring home a respectable income.
Even with that insurance, one of them would be taking days off for doctor visits, or days off for rest due to condition or treatment fatigue and income would drop. Paying the bills I saw, even when insurance took care of a huge portion of it, for them, without any extra work like landscaping or nice neighborhood living, will crush dreams and mini-vacations and camp for their kids for several years. The current system still relies horribly on the average citizen users paying out what they still can’t really afford.
Obamacare? Well, had Rubio and his friends not torpedoed the buffer account that would have theoretically kept it stable (the Achilles heel of the program), it would have had a much more favorable result. Perhaps not perfect, but it never had a chance since that account was killed off way before the system went active. And then they point and call it a Democratic/Liberal failure. Kinda funny really, like intentionally taking all the air out of your tires and driving your car on the interstate, crashing into a tree, then blaming the tire maker for it’s terrible handling and financial disaster.
Socialized? Quite a few point out the benefits. And quite a few point to their relatives in Canada or people they know who’ve had to use it, “and how much more horrible it is in comparison.” But really, it’s that or commit your citizens to raging debt and despair and depression (yay! more medical treatment!)
My opinion: Health care insurers and providers must be non-profits and have no business in political funding. Prices go up? Well, because of the costs to fix people, not the need to give their CEO’s a gigantic bonus and meet a stock price projection. I wonder how much care the CEO bonuses would have paid for. Oh, here’s the answer:
(Modern Healthcare-Apr.27, 2017)
Just like the screaming over term limits, Socialized healthcare can only work if it’s reasonably done. Not too overbearing. Not under performing. Give me a base package, and i’ll gladly pay a bit more to cover the social care problems everyone whose never experienced it themselves complains about.