Reply #14: Here's my 2005 medical costs...

[warren pease]

$6,802.01 overall in medical expenses: $5,184 in insurance premiums; $917.62 for prescriptions; and $700.39 in deductibles and copays for office visits. There's more in paying the balance between the doc's bill and the insurance company's "negotiated settlement," probably another thousand dollars or so, but I don't have it documented.

And the hits just keep on coming. This year, since my wife is now on the same basic program, 2007 totals will look more like:

A minimum of $15,996 overall in medical expenses: $12,696 in insurance premiums; at least $1,900 for prescriptions(doubling 2005 outlay and adding about $117); at least $1,400.00 in deductibles and copays for office visits (doubling last year's $700+). I think this is a little optimistic in that overall medical expenses will probably end up being more than $15.9K, but why try to inflate an already insane number.

Meanwhile, I bought a laptop from a guy yesterday through Craigslist/Portland. He's originally from B.C., Canada, and married an American who refuses to move up north. So he's 45 (which is about the age my body started to go to shit), both he and his wife are uninsured, they're both freelancers/self-employed so no work-related coverage, and he has no idea what he's going to do if either of them gets sick in this country.

In B.C., when he was last living there in 1998, full coverage cost him about $400 (Canadian) a year, and had he gotten seriously ill and unable to work, they would have placed him in a clinic, hospital or other facility most suited to his particular problem. This would be for life if necessary; or just for the duration of his illness or condition.

AND THAT TREATMENT WOULD HAVE BEEN ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE.

Too early to yell... But he was paying about $400 (Canadian) in taxes over the course of a year and everything he did that caused him to interact with B.C's health care system was 100 percent FREE. Here in privatized heaven, on the other hand, my wife and I are covered (sort of) for a modest $12,696 in premiums this year (and that number will certainly rise in 2008).

Great care when we have to use the system, I'll concede -- the problem isn't at the care disbursement end. The problem is with the parasitic blood-suckers who insert themselves between health care givers and us, cheat both docs and patients in the process and drive up costs while claiming the opposite.

The relationship of health care to insurance is manufactured out of thin air by the US’ obsession with applying market-based, privatized solutions to nationalized, systemic social problems.

Health care is what happens when patients and health care professionals – doctors, nurses, technicians, radiologists, pathology lab staff and so on -- interact to, in the best case, successfully diagnose and fix a medical problem.

Insurance is the protection money we're forced to pay the middle man to enable this transaction.

Why would anyone want to give some parasite who does absolutely nothing to provide health care, yet skims a significant percentage of the bill, a single damn penny?


wp