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~