Yes, there is a point . .
When my husband died 11 months ago, I lost medical coverage. I could have signed up for COBRA but it would have been $850 per month. I investigated other companies and they, too, set the rate at over $800 per month. (They all had my past medical records and it showed breast calicifcation in year 2000 that had not changed, plus I am going to be 62 in June) So $850 x 11 = $9350.
So I am ahead. But what if the tests had come back positive? Seeing my husband go thru 2 years treatment for colon cancer, I was appalled at the chemo costs! $17,000 per session, E/O week for 2 years.
@Linkat,
You
don't get better quality care. It's a myth. We DO NOT have the best healthcare in the world unless you are filthy rich or have a spectacular "Cadillac" plan like people in Congress or the UAW. And worse, a section of the population gets no care at all. You get what some CEO at a corporation decides you're going to get - not what you and your doctor decide. Higher cost does not equal better care and other countries like France and Denmark have proven it.
Quote:So, while I understand that a $3000 bill is A LOT all at once....if this is the all that she's had to pay ALL YEAR, she came out AHEAD (at least compared to what other people with healthcare insurance have to pay).
Right?
I think Sully answered this. I just looked up what I paid in medical cost over the last
five years - $3,286. I rarely get sick enough to need a doctor and I so far I've been lucky. However, I would rather have paid into a national pool
every year that same amount (or even a little more) to have the guarantee that I will never go bankrupt due to poor health. I would also be fine if my money was used to help some other poor American who did get sick. The problem is people like me don't even have an option to get decent healthcare. The insurance companies have priced me out and the government tells me to keep "shopping" around until I find something I can afford. We all need to pay and we all need to be covered. The insurance companies, as they function now, need to be dissolved. Like Sully, I just want an affordable option with a guarantee of coverage if I get sick. I see no way other than a national program, like Medicare.
@Green Witch,
I think in another thread rabel22 said that they have medicare, but still had to pay $16000 last year in medical costs.
I have no answers; just a lot of questions.
@Green Witch,
And I agree that the insurance companies have a lot of issues, and I agree with most all of the regulation the Obamacare bill put on them.
But removing them from the equation, I don't think, will do too much to reduce costs for everyone. The profit margin for insurance companies is only 2-5%. I don't think most of us would notice/care about a 5% reduction in our healthcare costs; we're looking for more like a 75% reducuction.....which just isn't going to happen.
The year I had breast cancer, 2001, I had medical insurance from Blue Cross with a high deductible. I don't have my records at hand, but I remember totalling up my med bills and, after insurance, they came to above $10,000; if you add paying for the insurance, it was another $3000. plus. Some of the hidden costs are that the insurance only pays x percentage of what it deems the right fees should be.
I had stage II invasive ca - this involved the original mammogram, ultrasound, stereotactic biopsy, two lumpectomies (sec0nd one with general anaesthesia), numerous pathology charges, surgeon's fees (surprisingly inexpensive and she is a nationally recognized bc surgeon), hospital and anaesthetist fees, followup mammos, a couple of followup ultra sounds.
Costs I probably shouldn't gripe about. On the other hand, I'd had insurance since the mid sixties with little medical/surg use of it that went beyond my deductibles over all those years. I was self-employed the majority of those years. The insurance company made a lot of money off of me. On the deductible, I didn't go to the highest deductible available until sometime in 2000. I've never made scads of money - though I enjoyed my careers - and always considered myself 'insurance poor'.
I am for single payer health care, but can't envision it happening. But I'm also interested in Robert's take, stated elsewhere, about not doing single payer but having a government health provision system. I could see that working - as well as not working.
