The Savage Arithmetic of the Pre-Existing Condition

[SheilaT]

51. People with really good health care plans

tend not to understand what everyone else deals with. And all those who work for the federal government tend to have really good health care plans, and are utterly astonished when you explain to them how it works out in the rest of the world. If you have a job with any kind of health plan, you get the plan your company has. Not much in the way of choices, other than perhaps opting for some extra coverage.

I happen to work for a hospital that seems to have a very good health care plan -- I say seems because I have almost no real experience with it. I get an eye exam and new contact lenses once a year, and a couple of years ago I tripped in my driveway and broke an arm. I paid around a hundred dollars out of pocked, and recently, a good two years after that whole thing, I got a check from our insurance company that was a reimbursement of a co-pay I should not have paid.

I tell people I have the Republican Health Care Plan. I don't get sick. I am fortunate enough to be blessed with incredibly good health, and it angers me beyond words when I listen to the crap that's out there about how people don't deserve coverage, or how one person shouldn't have to pay for someone else's bad health. No! We should all be helping each other out however we realistically can. Just because I'm healthy doesn't mean someone else shouldn't get all necessary health care. No matter what the circumstances. And we should have a single payer system that covers all of the basics -- annual check-ups, vaccinations, all prescribed medications, coverage for illnesses and accidents and anything else I haven't just thought of.

Besides, we ALL have the pre-existing condition of being alive.