Get Rid of Your Medical Insurance
It makes good economic sense for many people to dump their medical insurance. For those who rent apartments and ride the bus, it doesn't matter if their credit rating gets destroyed by a collection agency or three, so there is no reason they need to pay for their EMTALA-mandated emergency medical visits. They should save that money to buy their prescriptions (and staples like food, cigarettes, and booze).
Those middle class folks stuck in homes they can't sell in the depressed housing market and resigned to driving beat-up old cars during the Obama recession aren't looking at taking out a loan in the near future anyway, so they shouldn't worry about their credit rating either. They should use the money they save by dropping medical insurance to help make their next mortgage or car payment. Heck, they might have enough left over for a big screen TV, or at least an iPhone.
Worried about paying for college? The "rich" don't qualify for school loans anyway, and the poor have guaranteed loans and grants from the government. No need to worry about bad credit when the worse off you are, the better your chances for help. Living in a nanny state has its benefits....enjoy them.
Screw the insurance companies, the hospitals, and the doctors. Demand your right to free healthcare. You've got more important things to spend your hard-earned money on.
Those middle class folks stuck in homes they can't sell in the depressed housing market and resigned to driving beat-up old cars during the Obama recession aren't looking at taking out a loan in the near future anyway, so they shouldn't worry about their credit rating either. They should use the money they save by dropping medical insurance to help make their next mortgage or car payment. Heck, they might have enough left over for a big screen TV, or at least an iPhone.
Worried about paying for college? The "rich" don't qualify for school loans anyway, and the poor have guaranteed loans and grants from the government. No need to worry about bad credit when the worse off you are, the better your chances for help. Living in a nanny state has its benefits....enjoy them.
Screw the insurance companies, the hospitals, and the doctors. Demand your right to free healthcare. You've got more important things to spend your hard-earned money on.
Labels: health care crisis, satire
posted by scalpel at 2:57 PM
24 Comments:
(and staples like food, cigarettes, booze, guns and ammunition) (FTFY)
The "Obama Recession" lol? It was a recession during the Bush years too.
Also, hey, unlike you many people don't get medical insurance with their jobs. Amazing, isn't it?
Like Hannah - not all of us get insurance with our jobs. Oh - and some of us can't even qualify to purchase insurance, but we make more than we qualify for assistance.
Who might these people be? Private practice physicians, like us, who happened to have had the rotten luck of having a disqualifying medical "event" in their early 30's.
We're not middle class, our house if paid & our kids have graduated (one of whom followed us to become a physician). We have iPhones, a big screen TV & enjoy a glass of wine.
So - take your smugness & shove it! Thank God, fate or whomever you hold as a higher power, if you do at all & enjoy your access to insurance. We've been without for 30 years & the anxiety is a continual burden.....
You don't have a clue in your isolated ED........
Jeez, of all the things I might expect to be unfairly insulted for, renting an apartment and riding the bus never made the list. Good to know I'd apparently be a better person if I was up to my eyeballs in debt like the rest of America instead of living within my means.
Just trying to help.
And if you "can't get" insurance, then you don't have to worry about getting rid of it, do you? Problem solved.
Honestly - you think problem solved?
Altho we make lots of money, we are one illness/injury away from becoming bankrupt. We've put everything we can into a trust, but a hospital, other physicians, labs - all will come after our assets, no matter how well protected we think they are.
Why should ANYONE live with that? We don't want free healthcare, we just want to be able to purchase it. I can do without copays for our routine visits, but we can't even get catastrophic care - an MVA for example which might bring one of us to see you. All you see is we are uninsured & pontificate away. As physicians, we give away free healthcare when we can. Perhaps since you work for a group which is employed by a hospital, your view is narrow to the plight of many Americans and cannot give of your services as you might otherwise. (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here).
Trust me - living without healthcare is not by choice! We had it, then a random & rare tumor when my husband was 30 (when there was old fashioned insurance - not run by DRGs). It paid out, we paid our portion........then we were dropped & haven't been able to purchase insurance for 30 years.
I'm guessing you are too young to remember when a couple had to relinquish 1/2 of their estate before they qualified for assistance. I treated many who maxed out their insurance then had to sell a car, sell the house (because the remaining spouse could no longer afford the taxes on the long since paid off house), had to give up 1/2 their savings, retirement income - all to pay off a medical bill. Now - look around you today, at all you have - a wife, children, a home, parents with homes, a car - then think what one $300K bill for a hospital stay might do to your possessionss. Its very hard for young physicians to recall or even imagine those days.
uhh anonymous just so you know, the blogger is an ER doc, which makes him an expert on everything; INCLUDING insulting stereotypes about people without health insurance. So take your "facts" elsewhere.
Wait, if you're a physician in private practice and making enough money for iPhones & a big screen TV, wouldn't it make sense, if you cannot get health insurance (and while I might buy that your husband cannot get health insurance, I'm not buying that you can't), to ensure you've got a large enough emergency fund to cover the $300K bill that might bankrupt you? I realize that's a lot of money, but over 30 years, on a doctor's salary, you ought to have been able to amass it. Unless you've always been buying whatever the current decade's version of iPhones & big screen TVs happened to be, rather than making certain you'd be OK if the worst happened.
But then, what do I know...I rent a trailer and ride the bus. (And am intelligent enough to grasp the concept of satire.)
Insurance companies suck. Medical care is overpriced. Getting half a dozen separate bills for one ER visit is ridiculous. When I got one such bill 5 months after a visit, it was sent to a collection agency only 2 weeks later (without previous notice). I was so pissed, the only reason I paid it was to protect my credit rating.
But really, why bother? If ACORN can bust down the door of a foreclosed home and homestead on the bank's property, we should all make a similar statement about unfair medical costs.
This byzantine system of medical charges needs to collapse so we can start over.
Hello Scalpel,
You make a good point about incentives. Whatever the merits or demerits of the Obama Administration's plan, incentives are something we need to keep in mind. People might drop their own insurance. Also, employers might drop their employees' insurance.
As for fouling up one's credit, you might be right in that some people believe that if they don't plan on buying a home or a car they don't need good credit. If so, they are sadly mistaken.
Commercial apartment blocks and other housing rentals routinely check applicants' credit. Also, people who want to rent a car may need credit cards (as opposed to debit/check cards) with a significant amount of credit remaining on them. Many jobs require a background investigation including a credit check; sometimes everyone down to the people who answer the phones and take out the garbage at a given facility needs to be cleared.
In fact, a growing trend among insurance companies is to check applicants' credit too: the theory is that someone desperately in debt is more likely to exaggerate damages when an accident occurs, if not outright create such an "accident".
Besides, bad credit entries stay on your record for many years. Who knows what you'll want to buy or where you'll want (or need) to work or live a few years down the line?
Cheers,
Jeff Deutsch
well actually the insurance company is quite happy to get rid of it for you...my friend had 2 daughters one with diabetes and the other with aggressive form of lupus...initially her payment were around 800/month....as her children became ill I believe they finally topped out at 2500/month..kinda obvious they were just trying to jack the rate so high she'd cancel
Tongue and cheek obviously. What happens when the economy eventually recovers and people DO want to try to buy a car or house?
Still, I am sure many people would agree with your statements until they sick and have no one to follow up with after they are discharged from the ER following their EMTALA-mandated screening exam.
Scalpel, shoving your sick tongue and cheek aside, you make some of the best arguments for single payer, universal coverage ever. Thanks!!!!!
Hello ERP,
Indeed that the statements are tongue in cheek is obvious...to people like you and me. I think Scalpel is representing the way some of his patients think. They - and maybe some readers here - may not know many of the wider consequences of letting bills go unpaid and screwing up one's credit.
Midwest Woman, isn't there a possibility that the insurance company was trying to respond to the sudden and substantial increase in risk? Obviously people with diabetes and aggressive lupus incur much higher medical expenses than those who don't.
My best wishes to your friend and her family.
Cheers,
Jeff Deutsch
Single payer would be a disaster. Dr. Val just posted about the absurdity of Medicare paying for kidney transplants but only covering 36 months of anti-rejection meds. Then when the patient rejects the kidney, they'll pay for another transplant and 36 more months of meds.
Wouldn't it be cheaper for them to pay for those meds in perpetuity? Yes, but it would be even cheaper still for them to decide to not cover transplants at all (or to more tightly ration them either overtly or covertly).
When the government is paying the bills, what might be best for you takes a back seat to what is best for society.
health insurance is not quite like car insurance...if your children develop diseases out of your control there shouldn't be such a high penalty...it is a risk industry and lots of people pay premiums without every actually using the product so there is that profit pool. I know there is the arguement that those who engage in risky behavior should pay more but this certainly wasn't the case. This is something I've never been able to understand about health insurance. Drive irresponsible yes your rates should go up....but how do you differentiate in health insurance who deserves a rate increase and who doesn't? certainly not people who are victims of bad genetic luck. any thoughts?
Midwest Woman,
Except even auto insurance charges based on risk for where you live, no matter how safely you drive, you personal habits, whatever. Live in LA, you pay WAY more than you would living in most of the midwest.
Insurance is about making profit, as much profit as possible. That's why we need laws regulating insurance companies, eh? If we collectively want them to stay in business, we have to be willing for them to make enough profit to compete with other business opportunities. Or we have to decide we'll collectively pay together through the government.
no bailouts for any insurance companies so i going to assume they're solvent..health insurance is just a unqiue business anomaly..profit, yes, but at the expense of people who maybe have catstrophic illnesses..no. maybe like state farm..reduce premiums the more you don't utilize it...monetary incentives to quit smoking, weight loss, exercise and yes perhaps that ugly word rationing. I work primarily with elderly in the acute setting and what we put people thru the last years of their lives is horrible.
Trying to be responsible as a sole proprietor, I got an individual insurance policy. I paid as the contract stated and when I needed it, the insurance company bailed. That's right folks, now I have a 50k medical bill because the insurance company breached and wont pay. my premiums were paid but they wont and guess who is being sued. Not dumb enough to own a home and pay my own way through law school...so who's fault is it that I paid 300 a month for a policy for just me and they refuse the pay?
C - welcome to my world!!!
Yes, I've had an ovarian cyst (27 yrs ago) & that combined with my husbands pmh of benign tumor makes us uninsurble.
All those of your who have the "absolute" opinions of what you think really happens or not need to do a little deeper research.
The insurance companies control all accesss to medical care for those of us who are not completely indigent.
A complete travestry for the largest & most influential nation in the world! Satire is fine until it hits close to home. A 10 days stay in an ICU with OR, RAD, time, physician bills (yeah - I know what those are) - $300K wouldn't come close. No, we don't keep that much liquid & I'm guessing very few here that much liquid money.
What wonderland do all of you live in????
OMG... this is priceless!!!
"When the government is paying the bills, what might be best for you takes a back seat to what is best for society."
Thanks scapel. Do you mind if I use that one?
Er Rn
I'm 62 years old. I remember a time before there was health insurance. My parents were never burdened by health costs because they paid cash for service rendered. Why can't we go back to that system? Why do we need to pay a middle man. Most Dr. would be happy to operate business in this way. The only ones getting rich are the insurance companies.
Insurance companies I agree, but doctors and hospitals ?! They don't work on solar power, and certainly didn't spend 14 years in school to save you or the world and starve on the curbs. You pay a greasy mechanic more to diagnose your Honda.
When your haemorrhoids sting you hard, they will be more important to you than the "other more important stuff"!
ANd just for the record, look around you and skip the stereotypes; its insurance executives that wearing Rolexes and driving Bentleys, not doctors. Maybe thats where your money went.
As I've pointed out many many times, the insurance industry itself, through its trade association did an analysis of costs. They admit their overhead + profit is 16.7%, while that of Medicare is 3.3%. Furthermore, Medicare pays 19% less for doctors and 25% less for hospitals, yet just as many hospitals and doctors take new Medicare patients as take new PPO patients.; Combining those yields a 1/3 saving with no reduction whatsoever in care. There are many who do not want to save 1/3. That would be the insurance companies and their shills.
Post a Comment
<< Home