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Discuss the US Presidential Election & Health Care
Yesterday we discussed the war and how foreign policy will matter in your decision next Tuesday. Today our series of election discussion pieces continues with Health Care. With an obesity epidemic, a failing economy, and ballooning health care costs, which candidate has the best answers to making sure that Americans are able to stay healthy without America being bankrupted in the process?
Let me give you an anecdote to help to make your point and show how much of a parasite the insurance companies really are.
I took my grandfather to his general doctor the other day. On the window is a sign, "Pay in full at time of service with cash and get 30% off." So basically if you skip the whole insurance process you get 30% off on the spot at this doctor. Insurance isn't the only problem, but is a big part of why healthcare costs so much.
OK I'll bite. I'm a Canadian and back in Canada now, but I used to live in California. 5 years ago I had to have two vertebrae in my neck surgically fused together. I was self-employed and had what I thought was a reasonably good PPO (health insurance plan).
It was surgery that took two days from my visit to the doctor to being under the knife. There wasn't a lot of time to go over the fine print of details like who my anaesthesiologist was going to be and whether he was covered by my PPO. I had the surgery, and a month or two later I got a bill for something like $1700 from the anaesthesiologist.
I called the anaesthesiologist's company and they said "your PPO doesn't cover us. Pay up." I called the PPO and they said "It's the hospital's responsibility to choose a care that is covered by your policy. Don't pay this bill." I called the hospital and they said "We told you who the anaesthesiologist was going to be, it's not our problem your PPO won't pay."
This went around and around for months with everybody denying responsibility. It then went into collections, and totally messed up my credit. I finally paid it out of pocket myself but by that time I had a huge black mark on my credit and the cost had ballooned over $2200.
The total bill for the surgery was over $30k so I'm glad that's all I had to pay. Still, it's pretty clear in the end that I was the one who lost out of this. Nobody had any motivation to "be on my side", and that was pretty clear once it came down to the money.
www.clarke.ca