Freemarket Healthcare

This week several provisions of the new healthcare bill come into effect. All that I have heard about are limitations on the deniability of various costs to health insurance providers. I guess that is as progressive as a muslim socialist radical gets these days.

I had health insurance once. Twice actually. Once as a generous benefit from my wife’s government job and once on my own tab. My productivity contributed over $1,000 pre-bailout dilution USD to a well known health insurance provider who shall remain nameless because I don’t room in my head to store such meaningless things. My wife became pregnant and around that time my employer switched providers to cut costs. The pregnancy was then considered a pre-existing condition and therefore not covered.

The doctor was not pleased and wrote a letter to the insurance company detailing her grievances. Within a month we received a short letter to inform us that we had been dropped. Eden was over two years old before we were able to finish paying the hospital, doctor, anesthesiologist, lab ect… For a long time we got bills nearly everyday.

The whole thing reminded me of a little saying I once heard from my Father, “when a mouse and an elephant sleep in the same bed, the mouse gets hurt no matter how nice the elephant is.” The balance of power in the customer/insurance provider relationship is out of balance. They have all the power and you have none. While I was dutifully paying my monthly “premiums” as they are called, they were using the money to hire lobbyists to write favorable legislation into law in Albany and Washington, build tall building in downtown areas and fill those buildings with lawyers to find ways to deny claims. I was paying them to undermine my standing. I could have paid the healthcare costs if I had not given them over $14,000 over the previous year. I can either pay insurance companies or hospitals but paying both is hard work. So I decided to just pay the hospital when the need arises.

If the American people want a more rational healthcare bill, they can certainly have one. Here is one way I think would work. Everyone stop paying health insurance premiums for a month or two. Write a nice letter saying that you are uncomfortable with the influence the health insurance industry had in writing the latest healthcare bill and you don’t want your money being used to make the lives of others difficult but once a new bill is through the senate, you will gladly resume payment. I believe in this so much that I have started already.

Lately I have heard the president speak proudly of all the good his healthcare bill has done. I haven’t read all the provisions of that bill but it seems to me that meat of it is forcing me to back into purchasing health insurance products I have already tried and rejected. With a little luck, I should be able to get the same provider who dumped me three years ago.