What do you Expect to Lose or Gain from Healthcare Reform?

Like what exactly? Do you currently have insurance? Are your premiums within your budget? Do you expect your out of pocket expenses to be decreased?

I had occasion to be on unemployment for two months due to a lay-off less than a year ago. I was drawing the maximum allowable from the state. To my surprise and dismay, I did not qualify for medical assistance from the state or federal. Go figure, those who care so much about whether I have affordable healthcare were the ones denying me benefits. Not some cold-hearted insurance company. If you happen to find yourself too poor to afford to buy insurance and yet not poor enough to get assistance then you are just screwed. Perhaps this bill will address this situation. I do not know. There are a lot of details that have to be worked out between now and the time that it actually comes online. My situation should not be that unique. The more jobs that are lost the more there will be people in that situation. If the bill fails to provide a safety net for people in that situation the I would "deem" it a miserable failure.

Dental, even with insurance is ridiculously expensive. I just had a wisdom tooth removed this week. $800 (w/sedation) for ten minutes worth of work. Teeth are a gold mine, literally and figuratively. For the dentist!

So even with insurance, that might cover the deductible. In other words, I will still pay the entire bill out of pocket. Which is great if I want get all the work I can done this year. It doesn't pay to have a little bit of work done every year. Which has always been a beef of mine with the insurance system.

The deductible is always a deterrent factor to getting work done. Insurance seems to feed on deterring you from using it. The only way insurance wins is if you pay for service you do not use. If you use it they lose. So they throw those little deterrent factors in there to discourage you from using it unless you really need it. Which is a poor way of maintaining health.

Seems to me the best system for healthcare would be the one that goes to the extreme to encourage you to seek care early. Everyone in the healthcare industry would agree that early detection of maladies is the key to surviving them and lowering the cost of treating them. Seems like the whole system is going in reverse. I haven't seen anything in the healthcare bill that would reverse that trend. Having insurance alone is not the answer. I have had insurance all of my life practically. Still I put things off because giving a doctor or dentist $1000 is not exactly in my budget for the week. In a paycheck-to-paycheck world, I never will be able to work that in.

I did work for a time for a company that was self insured. They gave you a credit to spend on insurance that was part of the benefits package. It paid 100%, I was responsible for a $20 co-pay for any service. They encouraged you to go see a doctor if you needed one. They wanted a health workforce. It was in their best interest. Logical and rational. Sustainability was the problem. As costs rose, so to did the cost to the employee. It didn't take but a handful of people with cancer to severely effect the entire system. It started out very noble and good. Reality soon sets in.

While I try to take care of my own health, my own cost is effected by the worst cases of society. Because I am playing in this lottery pool of insurance, I receive no economic benefit from trying to live a health lifestyle. My expense will always be tied to the worst cases in the pool. I see this as the motivation behind insurance companies trying to find ways of denying benefits to those severely effected. It effects the whole pool adversely. That's bad for business, and its bad for the members of that pool. The whole insurance system of healthcare is flawed because it gambles with your health instead of promoting health. Its not a matter of if you will need but when you will need it. Some are born in need and some need little until they are almost consumed with age.

Flexible spending accounts are nice with the exception of the "use it or lose it" clause. Why should you ever lose it? Why not a lifetime flexible spending account for an entire family. One that could be used to pay for any type of medical, dental or vision expenses from your own account. Imagine a responsible society with little need for medicare or medicaid. Only a fund for those whose accounts were devastated. Fair, equitable, and compassionate. I would fully support such a system because it allows me to care for my own. My costs are my costs and unaffected by the worst cases of society. The only problem in the pool would be my problems. It could be safely invested so as to draw interest much as a 401K does currently. It could be left to your heirs should you expire with a balance. Cradle to grave healthcare that you control and spend as you choose. So what I am proposing is mandatory self insurance.

Who knows, if it worked well for health you could even use it for auto insurance. Imagine using your unused auto insurance money to go out and buy a new car when you needed one.

Oh, and the best part is, it isn't government controlled. Not only would it cover the 32 million without, it would cover the entire population of the country for all of eternity no matter what the population.

Jack,

Long time, no see,

Its more of a rhetorical question to get a feeling of why one would support or choose not to support the legislation that is about to pass into law. Based upon your personal situation a system is either sustainable or it is not. When it comes down to an election, we will vote for a candidate who supports our views. It would be difficult to support a view that was detrimental to ones personal situation.

The businesses in the health industry and that of the insurance industry will find ways under any system to make a profit. They will either make a profit or cease to exist. Nobody goes into business to be noble. Even doctors expect to be paid for the physical and financial expenses that they put into their businesses. As for insurance companies, it is foreseeable that if you cap what they charge for premiums, and force them to cover all takers, their only choice in order to remain profitable will be to reduce coverage. This will mean more out of pocket expenses from you and I. One way or another, someone is going to have to pay.

I can understand a person who does not want help from the government. It goes back to the "I'm from the government, I'm here to help" mentality that still resonates through the hearts of many.

Many of us are too proud to accept a helping hand even if it is the only way out. Americans are still a hard-working and proud people. It has made us a great nation. We are also a deeply caring and generous nation. Many counties around the globe have been the benefactors of our enormous hearts. We also come to the aid of our own in times of crisis. Many will line up for that charity and still other choose to go it alone.

My statement was if it is bad for me personally I have a hard time supporting it. Even if it benefits many. It is my primal instinct. To many it is a fault, to me it is a necessary fault. It is a fault that generosity keeps in check. Involuntary generosity cuts against that primal instinct. It forces a reversal of priorities. It forces compulsory generosity first and leaves me to provide for my own on what remains. As a matter of survival I want to limit compulsory generosity. You know, in the event I might happen to need the money for say my own personal medical expenses or something frivolous like that.