Monday, January 14, 2008

On Health

I am a bit irked. No, I am very irked.

I was well on my way to having a productive day when I got an email message from our college's human resources department. The message kindly informed all employees that our health insurance coverage was changing.

Now mind you, we do have fairly good coverage and we do have multiple options in terms of companies and plans. However, the message described how several of the plans were not going to be available to us anymore.

Of course, one of the plans is the one Sara and I are on. We have spent a lot of time researching and finding doctors that we trust and like, and have since developed a good rapport with them. This is important because we both have medical issues that are ongoing and need monitoring, so having a positive relationship with our medical doctors is important.

As of now, it seems like the plans that will be available to us will no longer cover any of our medical providers. This may change as the different websites that provide information have not been updated to reflect the upcoming changes. But I would be highly surprised if they suddenly were covered.

Our health care system, while touted as so great, is really a joke. Health care may be wonderful, I do not doubt the competence of many of our health care providers, but the system in which everything operates is a disaster, at best, and unethical at worst. In a nut shell, it aims to discourage people to seek care, funneling them into the most inexperienced, underqualified, or just poor providers possible so as to save a buck. The goal of many health insurance providers is to get people to leave the program; they make it more attractive for someone to get covered through a spouse's plan.

So most of us get bounced around, being herded into the most "cost effective" system to provide health care, where the bottom line is how little do we consume, not how healthy we are, while the executives of these companies boast how well the company is doing and earning millions in bonuses. And while we may have great health care in this country, it is becoming less and less accessible. Yet we spend more and more on trying to stay healthy.

On a related note, there was an interesting post on the Daily Kos today. It discussed the health insurance coverage of each of the presidential candidates and whether they provided health care for their campaign staff.

Here is a summary:

Candidate...................Coverage......................Provides care for staff?

Democrats:
Clinton .................... Covered by federal employees plan......................Yes
Edwards....................Blue Cross (coverage for the campaign)..............Yes
Obama......................Covered by federal employees plan......................Yes
Kucinich...................Covered by federal employees plan......................No

Republicans:
Giuliani ................Decline to disclose...............................Decline to disclose
Huckabee ..............Decline to disclose...............................Decline to disclose
McCain..... ............Covered by federal employees plan.........Decline to disclose
Paul......................Covered by federal employees plan.........No (staff are volunteers)
Romney ................Decline to disclose...............................Decline to disclose
Thompson ............Decline to disclose...............................Decline to disclose



Clinton, Obama, Kucinich, McCain, and Paul have the federal employees plan because they are all members of Congress. This plan is actually a very good plan, and some candidates argue it should be made available to everyone.

Romney is a resident of Massachusetts, which per law enacted by Romney when he was governor, requires everyone to have health insurance. It is possible that Thompson is covered through the Motion Picture Health Industry Plan because he is a member of the union (a bit ironic).

It is also important to note that Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson would probably be ineligible to obtain health insurance on the market because they have all had cancer.

Unfortunately, I don't see things getting any better anytime soon. However, we need a President (and a government in general) who will not allow things to get worse. I would settle for that.

As for us, we will see what happens. Who knows, we may be moving to new jobs, to a different place, so we might just have to get by in those few months. Or we might just have to deal with going out of network to see the doctors we like. There are lot of uncertainties lying ahead - I'll need to deal with each as I come to it.

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