Health Insurance Coupon

As you read this blog entry the American economy is faltering like a drunken fat man on a freshly mopped floor, banks are collapsing , fingers are being pointed in Congress as to who is at fault for not allowing 700 Billion (place your pinky in the corner of your mouth like Dr. Evil) dollars of Tax Payersyours and mine our money to be injected into Wall Street as stocks bounce up an down according to the very speculation of a bailout or not. Hell, I forgot all about the price of oil. I am truly miffed pissed off because there are American citizens who don’t see the ramifications of a bailout. But that is not what I am blogging about today. Today is, the Health Insurance Coupon and why I think Health Care is going to tank like our economy.

I am no economist. No sir. I am average Joe Shmo Tax-Paying Citizen. I understand the principal of economics, supply, demand, profit, loss, credit, lending, blah, blah, blah. But what I do understand with extreme certainty is health care, simply because I have been in health care for over 21 years. But it wasn’t until today, this morning to be exact, I saw an AARP commercial that made me stop ironing and take note. I couldn’t find the commercial on YouTube but it was a man who said he had an insurance coupon that gave him discounts for health care but didn’t actually cover anything. He got critically ill, went bankrupt and pretty much lost everything. I felt his pain. The same happened to me.

I drove in to work, with that commercial heavy in my mind, this morning and realized in 21 years I have had over 20 co-workers and employees that have suffered financial ruin after a serious on the job injury. Oh, sure, Workman’s Comp you say? Well let’s visit that idea. Workman’s comp only pays a percentage of your base pay and if you are living on your overtime. You are in big trouble. Don’t live on your overtime, you say? Give me a raise or shut the f*ck up, I say. Back on topic, if you are injured at home, however, you have to pay your health insurance premiums if you are out of work. Try mustering 400.00 or more per month so you can be seen in your doctor’s office as your other monthly bills pile higher than a sparrow’s eye. Can you believe there are people who don’t care one bit about that worker who is in trouble?

Currently, crack heads the chemically dependent can get help faster than a positive contributor to our community. Why is that? Why it is that someone who has worked their entire life and amassed a fortune has a Medicare card? Why is it that a hospital will see a patient over and over and over again and again and again because this patient is a hypochondriac and the same hospital bills over and over again? Simply put, if the return-visit-patient is defrauding the hospital with multiple visits isn’t the hospital doing the same thing if they bill the insurance company? Why doesn’t health insurance pay for a gym membership? Why is it that an appendectomy in one hospital is a different price at another? Aren’t they the same? Also, if an appendectomy cost four thousand dollars less in another country, why aren’t insurance companies sending patients there for treatment.


Lastly if drugs are cheaper in Mexico and Canada why we aren’t outsourcing prescription drugs for our elderly and the poor…we outsource everything else. I believe these types of questions will lower the price and increase competitiveness in health care. I believe serious eye opening questions need to be asked and grown-up decisions made instead of having to pay 80 percent of cost because you are out of a coverage network or having to pay 100 percent of a treatment because it is experimental…even if it saves your life. If something isn’t done soon hospitals will start closing and people will resort to the green alcohol and mercurochrome.

~Vale~

Legal Limit Waistlines

Can you imagine your insurance company penalizing you if your waistline exceeded legal healthy limits? Or could you imagine your employer making you pay a higher premium on your health insurance because you had the dreaded, “Muffin-Top” or “Dunn-Lap Disease”? If any sort of legislation passed like that in the U.S there would be a raucous cheer thrown up by ever Paramedic with a bad back. But believe it or not…such legislation exists…in Japan. Yes in the land of tiny cell phones, Godzilla and scrumptious but creepy Geisha there is a policy that men and women between the ages of 40 and 74 had to meet a certain size in their waistline.

This article was found in the Asia-Pacific section of the New York Times and written by Norimitsu Onishi

Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. That represents more than 56 million waistlines, or about 44 percent of the entire population.
Those exceeding government limits — 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women, which are identical to thresholds established in 2005 for Japan by the International Diabetes Federation as an easy guideline for identifying health risks — and having a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight. If necessary, those people will be steered toward further re-education after six more months…
So Japan has figured out that fat people are costing them money with their sweaty necks and size 36 pants. But the real kicker is that there are people that are against this effort to save money and make the Japanese population healthier. However there are people who are against a healthy population.

critics say that the government guidelines — especially the one about male waistlines — are simply too strict and that more than half of all men will be considered overweight. The effect, they say, will be to encourage overmedication and ultimately raise health care costs.
Yoichi Ogushi, a professor at Tokai University’s School of Medicine near Tokyo and an expert on public health, said that there was “no need at all” for the Japanese to lose weight.
“I don’t think the campaign will have any positive effect. Now if you did this in the United States, there would be benefits, since there are many Americans who weigh more than 100 kilograms,” or about 220 pounds, Mr. Ogushi said. “But the Japanese are so slender that they can’t afford to lose weight.”

These people also probably believe that smoking is a great stress reliever. But anyway you dice it, Japan has the right idea. But you can read the article by clicking the link in the title. If we had a healthier population there would be cheaper health care and fewer deaths from over consumption. But hey that’s just my opinion.


~Vale~