The health insurance debate has come to a head, yet again. It costs more for the consumer than ever before and the benefits continue to shrink. The cost to benefit ratio is growing more rapidly than I’ve ever seen.
My company kept it’s insurance this year because our insurer doesn’t even offer our level of coverage anymore. The choice was to renew with a price increase or take a cheaper policy that offered much less in benefits. We took it and ate the cost, both the company and the employees, so we could keep our “rich” benefit package.
But even “rich” packages don’t always work out.
Daddy had perfectly good insurance (better than my “rich” package), and when he was diagnosed with a degenerative liver disease, things got out of control. Between the co-pays and travel expenses (often 200 miles to see a specialist), medications, etc., it pretty much bankrupted him and Mama. When he died in July, Mama arranged for the funeral on credit. All their resources had been tapped out, but she knew she had some insurance checks coming.
They didn’t have anything left except for a house that needed $18,000 worth of work to get it back to realistic, a 10 year-old Buick and a butt-load of debt.
How about a health insurance reform debate that centers around stories like that? How a man and a woman work all their entire lives and contribute to greater good of our society and, when they retire, lose everything but the house that needs so much work because all the money to fix it’s going to medical bills?
How about a debate that centers around the reality of health care in this country?
It’s not such an uncommon one to tell.
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