Health Care Inequity
Some of you may remember the story of when I spent two years
in Philadelphia and worked in a job I loved but which had no benefits. No sick leave, no vacation, no health
care. I was also profoundly depressed
during that time. So I informed everyone
around me that if I was sick or injured, they were not to take me to the
hospital I preferred to die rather than
to rack up medical bills that I could never pay. Fortunately, I had no such
illness or injury.
Now I have a job with health insurance. One condition of that insurance is that we
must get annual physicals. This year, it
also required that we get glucose and cholesterol tests. I’ve been keeping the
statements about what it would have cost me as an uninsured person versus what
I’ve had to pay. I can’t make a table on
Blogspot, but I hope you can see the numbers.
Date Amt
Billed Amt I Owe Service
April 25 $126.00 $0 glucose/cholesterol tests
June 3 $315.00 $0 shingles vaccination
June 3 $206.00 $0 annual physical exam
June 3 $6.00 $0 some sort of
diagnostic lab
This is not fair!
Because I have the good fortune now to be in a job with health insurance,
I received $653 in medical services over a five week period, for which I haven’t
paid one penny. But if I were unemployed
or working in a job without health insurance, I would owe $653 to my doctor. Need I tell you how much $653 means to an
uninsured person in a low paying job??
And it’s going to get worse.
My mammogram showed “something suspicious” earlier this month, so I had
a 2nd mammogram and an ultrasound.
I’ll let you know how those numbers appear.
It makes my head spin that the “Christianists” on the right
wing of the political spectrum oppose the expansion of health care. Those
people supposedly follow Jesus Christ, who healed the sick. But they have no
compassion toward those whom Jesus healed. And, frankly, it disappoints me that President
Obama and the Democrats caved on the Affordable Care Act. It is patently unjust that those who are
least able to afford health care get charged more than I do. And, finally, I reserve my utter contempt for
the Republican oligarchy in the Missouri Legislature, who refused to extend
Medicare to the least and most desperate of our citizens … while most of them
claim their “Christian” credentials.
Shame on them. A pox upon them.
posted by Lisa Fox at 6/23/2014 10:43:00 PM
5 Comments:
It's actually worse than that, Lisa.
The costs charged to your insurance company are usually actually LOWER than what they charge the uninsured. Because why not kick poor people some more when they're sick?
This comment has been removed by the author.
I know that, JCF! It's an insidious and immoral system. There should be one price for any procedure, regardless of whether one has insurance.
The amounts I reported in this post were the amounts the providers requested. But the "allowable amounts" were lower, due to the price fixing between providers and insurers.
4/25: The provider billed $126. Insurance price was $40.72.
6/3: The provider billed $315. Insurance price was $232.18.
6/3: The provider billed $206. Insurance price was $144.60.
6/3: The provider billed $6. Insurance price was $3.05.
So I got about a 1/3 discount simply because I have insurance.
Please explain to me why we don't have a national insurance plan!?!
You probably got more than that if you were able to compare with retail. In the time before I qualified for Medicare, and was laid off (thank you Wall Street!) I found that the carriers and medicare negotiate prices well below what the individual without insurance pays.
Medicare really is the answer. Simply extend the age limit down to 1 minute old. Yes we would have to figure out how to do some funding, but we did that for old people, we can do it for others.
FWIW
jimB
Amen, Jim. I'm not thrilled with the Affordable Care Act. We should have gone for a single payer system and a level playing field.
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