Blitzer has no clue - I have a good job with subsidized insurance and a fairly high deductible, and I couldn’t get close to $300/mo, and with Type 2, I would have no hope in the private market.

Idiot.

It just doesn’t happen, as most working uninsured work part time (aka, in not-good jobs).

This is going to be me next month, when my health insurance coverage expires.

The individual insurance market SUCKS. I’m going to be out of a job soon, and not only are the premiums for “individual and family plans” for a family of 3 about $350/month, the coverage is shit. They have a very long list of things they won’t cover. If you get pregnant on an individual plan and your job doesn’t offer any maternity care, you might as well quit and go on Medicaid, because it’s your only hope of getting prenatal care, let alone hospital and delivery. That’s just one condition that I know of that is not covered. So if you have a health condition, it’s either get a job with decent benefits (not so easy in this economy, and for people without enough education and/or experience), or quit and live off the government. Who would WANT to be poor enough to go on Medicaid? People whose choice is between having a decent income and staying alive.

And if you lose your decent job through no fault of your own, you have to go on COBRA, which is going to cost me $550 a month. I could rent a second apartment for that. I’ve heard of some COBRA premiums running $1200 a month for families.

Keep telling these stories. There’s a wide and deep coalition of people across all classes and ideologies that will support universal single-payer—we just have to break through the media silence on the subject. As things get worse, and they will, the momentum will start to build. But it’s going to get very ugly first.

And if you lose your decent job through no fault of your own, you have to go on COBRA, which is going to cost me $550 a month. I could rent a second apartment for that. I’ve heard of some COBRA premiums running $1200 a month for families.

I can’t even extend my current coverage via COBRA, from what I’m able to tell from the fine print. My former employer’s been covering me since mid-July, when I was laid off, but they can only do so through October. After that, I need to get a new plan myself or go without.

And I think Amanda is exactly right: there would be a lot more economic risk-taking (which can be a very good thing) of no one had to worry about how they’re going to afford their COBRA or their individual plans. And I am positive that some people (I’ve met several pregnant women who do this) who are forced to avoid working too much or making too much money so Medicaid can cover it. That’s not laziness, that’s needing prenatal care you can’t get through an individual plan, not to mention that a complicated delivery can cost more than I make in a year.

And I’m not sure how well the “free market” really works when it comes to health insurance. With markets for most things, the company’s interest is in providing better and more services so you’ll buy them. With insurance, their economic interest is in screwing you over. They are hoping you buy insurance and won’t need it. (Obviously, this is the rationale behind excluding “pre-existing conditions.”) So when you do need it and they have to pay, they try every way possible to avoid paying or paying as little as possible.

With insurance, their economic interest is in screwing you over. They are hoping you buy insurance and won’t need it. (Obviously, this is the rationale behind excluding “pre-existing conditions.”) So when you do need it and they have to pay, they try every way possible to avoid paying or paying as little as possible.

I’ve noticed this irony myself; health insurance is one of the few business, it seems, in which the firm’s interest is in finding ways to not provide the service that’s been paid for.

Conservative ideology is based on Cheap Labor. Whether it was a defense of slavery, anti-union policies, or a bias against things such as health insurance, sick leave, or even anti-discrimination laws, the conservative goal is a fearful working class that knows its place and stays there. The anti-women stuff, anti-gay stuff, anti-immigrant stuff, and the rest are secondary concerns for most conservatives, though it goes along with their underlying goal of keeping social control through fear of poverty and worse.

If people in crappy jobs could leave them without losing health coverage, that would be the end of many businesses. Incomes would go up, working conditions would be better, and owners and managers would be told to fuck off on a regular basis. And the middle class might stop disappearing.

And unemployment issues would be eased if older workers could retire when they chose to. Having those scared workers at the time in their lives when they look forward to retiring but can’t do it until Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are available is one problem where there’s a huge hole that a little filling could ease many of the younger unemployed people’s issues. There are still plenty of jobs, it’s just that so many people have to put off retirement because they can’t afford it yet.

The GOP response to that? Let’s make the retirement age higher? Unfortunately, that’s becoming the Democratic answer as well. Why? Because taxes can’t be raised on those Galtian Overlord Millionaires who aren’t hiring us now and won’t hire us later and won’t hire us in the future under any tax structure the GOP could allow. We can make sure everyone in the lower classes pays THEIR income taxes, since that’s totally unfair that some people are too poor or get too many deductions to owe anything. But we can’t expect to “punish” success. We elect morons of that ilk, but it’s all Obama’s fault.

Comment #3: Ashley Herzog, totally. I was one of those with a “good” job, where good = decent pay, but no benefits because it was a temporary position (that lasted 4 yrs, but I never knew if it would last past the next 6 months). So, yeah I could buy my own insurance and to cover my husband and myself it was about $250 with a $5000 deductible and excluding things like maternity care. If it had not had that insane deductible, I might have paid for it. But, on average my family only went to the doc 2 times a year and it made no financial sense to pay $3K in premiums we would most likely never use. Even the one time my husband went in for an x-ray and CAT scan, the bill was only $1,800 (we made payments). Still wouldn’t have met that astronomical deductible.

Now, thru my husband’s job we have insurance that costs us $4K in premiums for the year. That hurts, BUT that comes with a $200 deductible, 10% co-pays, and after $2500 in claims is reached the insurance starts covering 100% for the rest of the year. That is affordable (for us) health insurance. If I’m going to pay thru the nose for coverage, then I want to be actually covered. None of this bullshit about having it “just in case” one of us is hospitalized.

Comment #6: Ashley Herzog - I didn’t have to work less to qualify, but I did apply and receive Medicaid for my first pregnancy. I had planned a homebirth and paid $2k out of pocket for my midwife so I didn’t actually use the Medicaid for much of my care. However, baby had different plans and I had to transfer to the hospital for a c-section. I am so grateful for Medicaid.*

*It also covered my daughter for her first 2 yrs until we recently were able to purchase insurance.

Keep telling these stories. There’s a wide and deep coalition of people across all classes and ideologies that will support universal single-payer—we just have to break through the media silence on the subject.

You’re forgetting teh research that shows that for conservatives, showing them they’re wrong reinforces them clinging to falsehoods.

You can show them that the US healthcare system will lead to them personally being buggered by rampaging hyenas, and they’ll still decry “socialism” and claim it’s the best in the world.

I think the fact that the more anyone outside the US know about your system, the less they want to switch to a similiar system says all that needs be said. I mean, I’ve actually seen it used as a pejorative in a GP’s magazine regarding health-cae policy proposals.

Now, there is the exception, I suppose, of entrepeneurs.  There are a lot of freelancers and entrepeneurs who take their chances with going uninsured, because money is tight and also because insurance is more expensive than Blitzer is letting on.

They may be thinking about one (typically very loud mouthed) contingent—contract workers in the information technology business, who make good money, are most often male, single, young, and healthy, grew up middle-class or better, got an education on mommy and daddy’s dime while on mommy and daddy’s insurance, and think they know everything and are immortal and don’t owe anyone anything.  The Galtboys.

These are a dime a dozen on political call-in shows and the general blog commentariat.

health insurance is one of the few business, it seems, in which the firm’s interest is in finding ways to not provide the service that’s been paid for.
Comment #8: Linnaeus on 09/26 at 10:46 AM

Health clubs, in terms of volume, anyway—the fewer people who show up to use the gym, the better your profit.  They do it not by denying access, though, it’s more in signing up people who won’t show up but will be maneuvered or guilted into not cancelling.

It just doesn’t happen, as most working uninsured work part time (aka, in not-good jobs).

I work full time and I don’t get health benefits. And at $9.50 an hour, I sure as hell can’t afford to get any on my own. But I’m working a non-unionized job in a Southern right-to-work state, so I’m just grateful to be making more than minimum wage.

And I’m not sure how well the “free market” really works when it comes to health insurance.

Godawful, that’s how.

I’m convinced a lot of people oppose health care reform because they’ll be damned if someone they see as “undeserving” gets the same care they do. I can’t tell you how many I’ve heard point to a trashy-looking person and whisper, “can you imagine having to sit next to them in the doctor’s office?”

I have a “good job”, and our monthly premium for family coverage, on top of what my employer pays, is $600.  Last time we were on it, that covered nothing in the way of basic preventive care (now due to ACA, it’s probably different). So we are on my spouse’s coverage. He works at one of those rare jobs where part time employees have access to health care. It only costs us $200/month and covers most preventive care. We are able to have him working part time only because of this health care subsidy.

Most people probably don’t realize that they sum they pay is in addition to whatever the employer pays.  On the open market, I am guessing we would need to pay something like $1200 for coverage, and we have no pre-existing conditions.

Comment #17: kajey, Yeah, out current coverage for a family actually costs about $1600 per month. We pay 20% of that.

I’ll go all anecdotal and estimate that 19 out of 20 of the double-income couples I know do it not for the income, but for the insurance. Same with the ones who used to work freelance or even owned their own business, but decided to go back to the corporate fold. Insurance. Nobody ever mentions any other motivation.

Four things I often run into when arguing with libertarians or other conservatives:

1. They will claim that anybody can afford insurance by bringing up some special “low-price” or “youth” insurer that advertises low rates (complete with link to the website; oh so useful).  This is, of course, like saying that everybody can afford to borrow money because my god, look at the low rates that the bank lists on its website.

2. They will object to the idea of community rating for health insurance (making everybody pay the same amount for health insurance irrespective of their health history), because they think that “healthy” people (like themselves!) ought to pay less.  When I ask them how they expect an insurance plan that charges too little to people who don’t need it will be able to afford covering the costs of those who do, then they move on to:

3. They will argue that insurance should “save money” by not covering routine care, only “catastrophic” events, and back it up with car insurance analogies.  My “favorite” of these is “a health insurer that pays for your routine care is like a car insurer that pays for your gas”; because, um, a car insurer that paid for your gas would incentivize its clients to drive more and thus have more accidents, whereas a health insurer that paid for routine care would incentivize prevention, early detection and treatment, which would reduce its costs.

4. They will at all points assume with absolute certainty that they are “healthy,” and that “healthy” people are correct in their knowledge that they are “healthy.”  They can’t wrap their heads around the idea that tomorrow you could discover that you’ve got, say, a congenital disorder that will flare up and require care for the rest of your days.

Comment #7: Ashley Herzog on 09/26 at 10:40 AM

With insurance, their economic interest is in screwing you over. They are hoping you buy insurance and won’t need it. (Obviously, this is the rationale behind excluding “pre-existing conditions.”) So when you do need it and they have to pay, they try every way possible to avoid paying or paying as little as possible.

There are actually two rationales for pre-existing condition exclusions:

1. The good, “official” one, which is to protect the insurance company from people who only show up to buy insurance when they become certain that they’re going to need it.

2. The sinister, open-secret one that you point out and everybody knows: health insurers are looking for any excuse at all to deny people their claims.

Pre-existing conditions is not the only way they avoid paying claims, however; the other common one is to “discover,” 7 years later, that you “lied” in your application.

Comment #8: Linnaeus on 09/26 at 10:46 AM

I’ve noticed this irony myself; health insurance is one of the few business, it seems, in which the firm’s interest is in finding ways to not provide the service that’s been paid for.

There’s a conventional pithy saying for this: “Insurance is the business of denying claims.”

Going back to what I was saying above, the resistance to health insurance paying for routine care is a subtle indication that the whole business is very wrong for the clients.  A health insurer that honestly intended to pay for their customers’ healthcare costs if they fell seriously sick would want their healthy customers to get plenty of routine care, because (a) it’s cheap, (b) it reduces the risk of expensive stuff.  Flip this around,  however, and what you get is that a health insurer that shows reluctance to cover routine care is giving off a signal that they don’t actually intend to cover their clients if they get seriously sick.

Comment #9: 3letterjon on 09/26 at 10:55 AM

And unemployment issues would be eased if older workers could retire when they chose to. Having those scared workers at the time in their lives when they look forward to retiring but can’t do it until Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are available is one problem where there’s a huge hole that a little filling could ease many of the younger unemployed people’s issues. There are still plenty of jobs, it’s just that so many people have to put off retirement because they can’t afford it yet. The GOP response to that? Let’s make the retirement age higher? Unfortunately, that’s becoming the Democratic answer as well.

I think it was Krugman who was pointing out some months ago a big problem with proposals to raise the retirement age: it fucks blue-collar workers over, who because of jobs prone to physical injuries will be far more often unable to wait until “retirement” age to retire.

Well, not entirely.

First of all, when Blitzer asked the question of Paul, it most certainly was not a hypothetical question.

As it turns out, Paul was not speaking purely in hypotheticals. Back in 2008, Kent Snyder — Paul’s former campaign chairman — died of complications from pneumonia. Like the man in Blitzer’s example, the 49-year-old Snyder (pictured) was relatively young and seemingly healthy* when the illness struck. He was also uninsured. When he died on June 26, 2008, two weeks after Paul withdrew his first bid for the presidency, his hospital costs amounted to $400,000. The bill was handed to Snyder’s surviving mother (pictured, left), who was incapable of paying. Friends launched a website to solicit donations.

NOW. I have a good job. In fact, I have a damn good job. I work from home from a different state as my employer and count myself to be pretty lucky. My employer is mid-sized (not a small business, not a large corporation) and had a pretty decent bennie package. The problem is that the major insurance company that we got our insurance through doesn’t want to cover me because I live in the wrong state. Now, I could take a ten minute walk and be in a state that they have full network in, but the state that I actually have my house in makes me persona non grata to the insurance company.

I found this out because, during a house renovation, I stepped on a rusty nail. We all know what that means. But yet when I went to the local clinic to get the tetanus shot, I was issued a bill from the insurance company stating that they weren’t going to cover it. So I called them up and asked why and they said “because you were out of network.” And I explained that even if that’s the case, the shot qualified as an emergency situation. To which the woman on the phone tried to argue that it was not necessary to get a tetanus shot after stepping on a rusty nail. I repeated that bit back to her with as much contempt as I could muster and managed to bully them into paying (most) of it, but it was still pretty appalling and if I weren’t the ballbuster that you all know and love, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get it covered.

While working with our office manager to overcome this obstacle (during which time someone at the insurance company basically suggested I commit fraud by opening a mailbox across the border), I was told that the only way they would cover me was if I took an indemnity plan. Let me state that I am an under-40 non-smoker without any major health issues or worrisome family histories. The indemnity plan would have required that I pay fourteen hundred dollars a month. The copay and deductible were equally ridiculous. So I would have been paying well over the cost of my mortgage in order to have health insurance.  And even then it didn’t really sound like they were going to be offering me any better coverage than I would have had otherwise. So I said “Fuck it” and we went off of insurance until my husband was able to get me covered. It’s not my company or my job that’s the problem, it’s the insurance companies.

(apologizing in advance if this is a double-post) Well, not entirely.

First of all, when Blitzer asked the question of Paul, it most certainly was not a hypothetical question.

As it turns out, Paul was not speaking purely in hypotheticals. Back in 2008, Kent Snyder — Paul’s former campaign chairman — died of complications from pneumonia. Like the man in Blitzer’s example, the 49-year-old Snyder (pictured) was relatively young and seemingly healthy* when the illness struck. He was also uninsured. When he died on June 26, 2008, two weeks after Paul withdrew his first bid for the presidency, his hospital costs amounted to $400,000. The bill was handed to Snyder’s surviving mother (pictured, left), who was incapable of paying. Friends launched a website to solicit donations.

NOW. I have a good job. In fact, I have a damn good job. I work from home from a different state as my employer and count myself to be pretty lucky. My employer is mid-sized (not a small business, not a large corporation) and had a pretty decent bennie package. The problem is that the major insurance company that we got our insurance through doesn’t want to cover me because I live in the wrong state. Now, I could take a ten minute walk and be in a state that they have full network in, but the state that I actually have my house in makes me persona non grata to the insurance company.

I found this out because, during a house renovation, I stepped on a rusty nail. We all know what that means. But yet when I went to the local clinic to get the tetanus shot, I was issued a bill from the insurance company stating that they weren’t going to cover it. So I called them up and asked why and they said “because you were out of network.” And I explained that even if that’s the case, the shot qualified as an emergency situation. To which the woman on the phone tried to argue that it was not necessary to get a tetanus shot after stepping on a rusty nail. I repeated that bit back to her with as much contempt as I could muster and managed to bully them into paying (most) of it, but it was still pretty appalling and if I weren’t the ballbuster that you all know and love, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get it covered.

While working with our office manager to overcome this obstacle (during which time someone at the insurance company basically suggested I commit fraud by opening a mailbox across the border), I was told that I could qualify for an indemnity plan. Let me state that I am an under-40 non-smoker without any major health issues or worrisome family histories. The indemnity plan would have required I pay fourteen hundred dollars a month. The copay and deductible were equally ridiculous. So I would have been paying well over the cost of my mortgage in order to have health insurance.  And even then it didn’t really sound like they were going to be offering me any better coverage than I would have had otherwise. So I said “Fuck it” and we went off of insurance until my husband was able to get me covered. It’s not my company or my job that’s the problem, it’s the insurance companies.

” I can’t tell you how many I’ve heard point to a trashy-looking person and whisper, “can you imagine having to sit next to them in the doctor’s office?””

...would they rather sit next to them in a cemetery?

I feel like we’re trying to recreate Dicken’s England.  I’ve been reading David Copperfield, and the parallels are scary, with a system that has extreme wealth on one end and abject poverty at the other.  Add to that America’s experiences during the Golden Age, and it’s not hard to predict where this is going.

The thing that really bothers me is the childish idea that not making healthcare available for large groups of Americans somehow has no cost (socially, economically, and morally).  Stir in large dollops of the so-called Judeo-Christian morality the Reichwing pretends to be so obsessed over, and it’s easy to see what the real “right” thing to do is…

The point about cheap labor is good because I find it curious that it never seems to come up in all the talk about jobs that a high unemployment rate is nothing but good for big business since it keeps down wage inflation. 

Galtboys indeed, my wife is a contract worker in tech, just one of the reasons I’m a feminist, oh the stories she has.  She has her own insurance which is actually not too bad at all for her cost wise.  I, OTOH, found out I have MS so my insurance is whatever money I can put aside myself so maybe I should just go libertarian, they’d love me at all the parties till I go blind, deaf, and stop dancing so well.  The good part is I don’t have to worry about fiting into the corporate fold for the insurance since I won’t get it anyway so might as well start my own business, I would think Galtboys should love me but for some reason they never do. lol, I’m just glad I have a funny name for them now.

I’ve noticed this irony myself; health insurance is one of the few business, it seems, in which the firm’s interest is in finding ways to not provide the service that’s been paid for.

Well, I’d say that’s the case with insurance in general, but while most insurance plans are for ‘if’, health insurance is for ‘when’. So there’s more reason to screw people over because instead of an occasional big claim they deal with lots of smaller ones.

For me, the biggest reason to support universal health care is because the people who most need health insurance by definition cannot afford it. Have ongoing health care needs that you can’t afford without insurance? No for-profit agency is going to cover you for less than the cost of your care.

“Please drop the red herrings from televised debates”.

What, so they’ll all be like five minutes long?

Shit. $300 a month is three-fourths of my family’s grocery budget.

Yeah, the only reason I’m uninsured is my spouse and I are just choosing to do something else with the harvest from the money tree in our backyard.

3letterjon:

Of course, the gallows irony is that our current healthcare system actually makes labor more expensive. There’s the cost of benefits for companies that still offer them, there’s the extra price people need to build into jobs-without-benefits to make them worth taking, the cost of extra illnesses because employees can’t afford to take care of themselves.

But way too many managers are like Milton’s Satan: they’d rather be unquestioned bosses of a hellhole than share power in a place that everyone likes to work at.

And I’m sick of people saying “private charities” will step in to cover people’s health care costs if the government doesn’t. So why aren’t they doing that now? I find it very hard to believe a libertarian “I’m getting mine and fuck you” mentality would inspire people to shell out for other people’s desperate needs. Ayn Rand said altruism was a flaw, not a virtue.

I was afuckingstonished at what COBRA insurance would have cost in the US - I stayed on a month or two after my job finished. If I remember aright, it was $600 a month and I was a healthy, non-smoking 28 year old woman. I hugged my British passport tight and got travel insurance that would have flown me back to the good ol’NHS had anything happened.

I hope you guys sort your system out before David Cameron breaks ours to be as bad as yours.

9 years ago, COBRA would have cost me $800 a month to cover my family of 4. I went without insurance coverage for the one month I had to work before my new employer gave me health benefits. At the time, $800 a month was half of what I was making.

I would love to ask these same people what they would do it Terri Shaivo hadn’t had insurance.  Would they be willing to yank the plug then?

My husband and I were both laid off in 2001 and started our own business. We found decent health insurance for a little under $500 a month. We’re now paying almost $1700 a month, which is almost our mortgage payment.

We can’t hire anyone because, I can’t afford to subsidize their health insurance. Universal health care (or price controls) would mean we’d become actual Job Creators. We couldn’t start our company now because we couldn’t afford medical coverage.

I have a friend who is working full time just for benefits, while she is writing novels. Not just “I’m going to write” but “I’ve had 6 novels on the shelf in the last 2 1/2 years, won the John Campbell award for best new author and been nominated for a hugo.” Her writing income is enough that she could quit her job, but she can’t because she needs the insurance.

I despair at the fix. It’s not clear that the affordable care act actually is going to control costs. But the “free market” is taking more and more money to line the pockets of investors and executives. It’s hampering mobility and making it more difficult for everyone.

I don’t understand why so many people are so against universal health care.

“Your average American can see immediately at least one major problem with this question. There is no such thing as “good job” that doesn’t have insurance benefits.”

I think the $200-300 quoted was probably the employee contribution of an employer provided health plan. Even if you have health insurance as part of your job, it’s not all that affordable.

COBRA is a joke.  I lost my job last May, and my COBRA payment is “only” $350 per month, because I’m single and always had the cheapest plan.  My unemployment payment is $380 per week.  So basically, every month about a quarter of my unemployment income is spent on health insurance.  The second week’s unemployment goes to things I can’t get out of.  A combination of cell phone and student loan payments takes up nearly the $380.  So I have to wait two weeks into each month before I even get money to spend on food, gas, and emergencies.  Thankfully I was able to save a lot of money before I got laid off, because my company paid way too much and kept us on as dead weight for far too long.  But I can’t imagine trying to live on unemployment alone and still being able to afford COBRA.

Forget $300 a month, for the self-employed inching toward a Medicare age that’s running away from us—it’s more like $1,000 a month, per person.

Which is what my friend Brenda has to pay. I was putting out $700 a month, until my insurance company upped it to the $1,000 a month that I couldn’t afford—especially since the insurance also wasn’t covering another $500 a month for a treatment that I required.

In that case, I had the literal choice between my health, and ineffective health insurance.

I choose to pay for the treatment that brought me back to health (even though it decimated my savings), and now cobble my healthcare together from two different low-cost health care centers, one of which doesn’t even offer doctor’s care.

After my brother was laid off at 58 (17 years at that job), Cobra covered him through the first 18 months of unemployment insurance. When it went, he would have had to pay $500 a month on Florida’s $280 dollars a week. That’s right, half his “income.”

His unemployment has run out, and my brother is now at the beginning of a two year college course that will retrain him for a career in a field that’s still hiring (health care, ironically).

The community college doesn’t offer health insurance, he doesn’t have the $1,000 a month for private coverage, so he’s going bareback in hope that there’s a job with health insurance coverage two years from now.

His partner has retired on Social Security, and luckily is of the age for Medicare. Which is something neither my friend Brenda, my brother or I can depend on to be there when we, finally, get to 65.

However, my friend Wendy is the worst case scenario.

Five years ago she went through her first bout of ovarian cancer, which gave her a hell of pre-existing condition because ovarian cancer normally returns in three years.

She ran through her life savings and $10,000 of her mother’s before the government picked up the tab for the rest of chemo.

She then found the only work available, for a university that didn’t offer health benefits, nursed her terminally ill mother, who left enough in a will that was contested, and so prevented Wendy from being able to get Medicaid for the lastest bout of ovarian cancer.

She fell through the cracks: by the time Wendy was eligible for Medicare she was so far gone that’s she now 4th stage, terminal. The government has since paid for three rounds of chemo that are odds on for ineffective, but which might well have saved her if she’d been able to access it earlier.

Wendy is a single mother who had hoped to live long enough to guide her daughter through to graduating high school. As it is, Esme will probably lose her mother when she’s 14.

Social Security benefits will kick in then—unless the Super Committee guts them—but that will be small comfort for losing a mother to the greed of the health insurance industry and our government, which protects them.

And Republicans who would cheer her mother’s death.

I was issued a bill from the insurance company stating that they weren’t going to cover it. So I called them up and asked why and they said “because you were out of network.”

The in-network thing is a really BIG DEAL, because, when doctors contract to be part of an insurance company’s network, they’re agreeing to take it up the ass whenever the insurance company says so.  In-network compensation for office visits, lab work, and procedures is often shockingly low.  Back when I had the world’s worst insurance plan (which my company hoisted on us to “cut costs”), the insurance regularly paid 10-50% of the actual bill.  This is why, as far as I’m concerned, doctors can shove it when they complain about Medicare’s low rates of compensation.  80% is greater than 50%, those doctors basically want the government to make up for their insurance-company-imposed shortfalls.

kesh—when my then-bf went to get some labs done sans insurance (I think it was a simple blood draw), I told the cashier that I would be paying for it and she said it would cost something like $80. So I told her I’d be right back, I had to go to the cash machine, etc. She said “oh, you’re paying in cash? That will be $13 then.”

those doctors basically want the government to make up for their insurance-company-imposed shortfalls.

Although, that said, elderly patients are a lot of work, and often take up more generous doctors’ off-the-clock attention.

So I told her I’d be right back, I had to go to the cash machine, etc. She said “oh, you’re paying in cash? That will be $13 then.”

That’s surprising.  In my past experience, clinics charge cash patients the full amount (which they would never get from insurance).  Hopefully, some clinics are getting smarter about that.  It’s better to get $13 now than $80 never.

When I got laid off from a very large software company in 2009, my COBRA for my family would have been $1,987 per month, no shit.  I ended up on my wife/ex-wife’s insurance and then picked up COBRA from hers for myself for $657/mo.  I was told that with my type II diabetes, mental health issues, and soon-to-be-diagnosed Crohn’s, I was completely uninsurable on the private market.  I thank the gods that I got a full-time job with decent benefits (only about $300/mo. out of pocket for a dozen prescriptions and doctor co-pays) before I got tapped out on that.

So, I am really in favor of universal single-payer, even as I am now employed.

Comment #39: Mighty Ponygirl - I’ve experienced that too, getting a lower price if I’m paying cash. I was recently talking with my midwife from my first pregnancy and she charges $3500 if she’s billing insurance and $2300 if the client pays cash.

The point about cheap labor is good because I find it curious that it never seems to come up in all the talk about jobs that a high unemployment rate is nothing but good for big business since it keeps down wage inflation.

I try to explain this to my family, but they’re convinced that unemployed people are just lazy and don’t want to work.

*sigh*

@44: I like to respond to that statement by saying, “people who make such assumptions are usually just projecting their own laziness onto others.” It’s typically true, and as such it both wins you the argument and pisses them off.

bananacat@35:

A combination of cell phone and student loan payments takes up nearly the $380.

Call your student-loan people & ask about unemployment forbearance—the interest will continue to accumulate, but IIRC you can get up to 18 months without having to make payments.  I’m no fan of student-loan vendors and I know they like to drag payments out to maximize the interest paid, but it sounds like it would be worth it in your case.  At the very least, even if it’s not a federally-guaranteed debt, they should be able to lower the payments temporarily.

FWIW, my small office pays my premium ($500/mo, or $6K annually) for me, which is nice.  But we’re too small for COBRA, so people who leave are only eligible for three months’ continuation, and $510 (full premium + 2% admin fee) is a lot for someone unemployed.  Dependent coverage is $720/month, so that would easily be more than a mortgage payment for a laid-off single parent.  Like someone above said, it’s not the employers’ fault, either.

Public universities are in on the racket, too. My husband’s school has a mandatory insurance policy, meaning if you don’t have insurance, you can’t go there. Can’t find any? They’ll automatically enroll you and your spouse in their school insurance plan for the low, low price of $5,000 per year. With one dependent, it’s $8,000.

@44: My (probably incorrect, in retrospect) assumption was that Blitzer was trying to avoid that kind of response with his question.  I thought he was trying to paint a picture of someone who was “deserving,” a “contributor to society,” so it would be harder for Paul to let him die.  Of course, if that were the intent, it would have been better to use some of the stories from this thread—people working hard but who can’t afford insurance.  Either way, Paul and his supporters are apparently content to let people die because they don’t have a pile of money or a job with health insurance.

“I try to explain this to my family, but they’re convinced that unemployed people are just lazy and don’t want to work.”

This is the payoff for decades (centuries) of bullshit talking points about “America, land of opportunity!  Where anyone can start out as the janitor, and, with a little hard work, some gumption, some moxie, and some stick-to-it-ive-ness, work their way up to become company president!”

Instead of getting upset at our galtian overlords and the crooked system they maintain to keep us proles poor and in line, many of us blame the victims of our society’s many disturbing pathologies.

We have one of the least financially mobile societies among the Western world, and the smoking ruins of our economy — looted by the banksters and others playing in the world’s largest casino — wait to topple on any of us if we’re lucky enough to lose life’s lottery, but there will always be those who stand up to loudly declare taxes on the rich an obscenity and the responsibility for anyone’s misfortune lies at their own feet.  What a country…

What a depressing thread. I’ve had jobs with no health insurance ever since graduating in 2009. I tell ya, I’m lucky that the medication I use to treat my chronic condition—hypoactive thyroid, which my doctors would not have noticed if I hadn’t been alert for the symptoms, thanks to them being overworked Community Health Center doctors—is fairly cheap. Just $8 a month thanks to generic drug availability. What if it had been $120 instead? I would have been broke. Or just really run down and sick all the time.

This is the payoff for decades (centuries) of bullshit talking points about “America, land of opportunity!  Where anyone can start out as the janitor, and, with a little hard work, some gumption, some moxie, and some stick-to-it-ive-ness, work their way up to become company president!”

The least socially mobile country in the West is the UK.  Would anyone like to guess what the second worst is?

Wendy is a single mother who had hoped to live long enough to guide her daughter through to graduating high school. As it is, Esme will probably lose her mother when she’s 14.

That is so friggin’ horrible.

And you know the Republicans are going to blame Esme for any problems she might have later, or Wendy for not arranging things better before she died “like a responsible parent would”.

At some stage you people are going to have to look into Madame La Guillotine.  I wouldn’t be surprised if, with the Wall Street protesters being beaten down and arrested, somebody started taking shots at brokers.

Public universities are in on the racket, too. My husband’s school has a mandatory insurance policy, meaning if you don’t have insurance, you can’t go there. Can’t find any? They’ll automatically enroll you and your spouse in their school insurance plan for the low, low price of $5,000 per year. With one dependent, it’s $8,000.

Oooh! me next! Remember my “I’ll pay in cash story” upthread? Well, the reason for that was because my then-bf was in fact on student insurance. When they sell you that insurance, the pitch is “this isn’t for wellness visits, etc. This is for emergency situations, like appendicitis.” Well, he called their bluff. His appendicitis started off as a simple infection that, if he felt he could have gone to a doctor about his abdominal issues, they could have treated him early with a round of antibiotics. But since he couldn’t go to a doctor (because he figured it was just some bug that would pass), shit went south, and by the time he was admitted to surgery (after waiting in the waiting room for 8 hours—but hey, in America, you don’t have to wait!) his mother was being asked to fill out organ donation cards because they didn’t think he’d survive because his appendix had already burst. And the insurance company decided “nope, we’re not going to pay for this, either. SUCKA.” If the hospital in question hadn’t taken his Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars hospital bill as a charity case, he would have had to declare bankruptcy, and wouldn’t have been able to complete his college (math education degree, you know, one of those worthless degrees that we have a glut of in this country).

The next year, when he decided “screw it, I’m not giving those assholes any of my money” he wound up in the hospital again with another organ failure (we’re pretty sure that’s the last of it). But since he had no money, he qualified for Medicaid. Talk about a difference. I got one call from the hospital after the fact because of a mix-up in billing, and I basically said “hey, he’s being covered by Medicaid” and they were like “oh shit sorry” and never bothered us again.

Oh, and the best part was at the time, we had wanted to be married and I had good bennies at the time, but we couldn’t get married because he would have lost his financial aid and I couldn’t afford to pay his tuition.

@Triplanetary: it’s not about unemployed people, it’s just racism.  Most middle class conservatives don’t actually hate the poor; they just hate brown people and want to mask it.

Amanda and 3letterjon are right, no doubt about it, to say that big business in the U.S. hates universal health insurance because it doesn’t want competition from entrepreneurs.  It also loves the suck-it-up mentality of insurance-captive workers.  The funny part is that it too is paying for the Great American Clusterfuck.  General Motors could compete much better with foreign manufacturers like Toyota, Hyundai, Saab, etc. if it didn’t have to spend a fortune on megacorporate health insurance for workers.

No, they hate the poor too. They say they don’t because they hold onto an idealized version of the Noble Poor, but few to zero actual poor people can actually live up to that version.

Seconding MP. They definitely hate all (almost all) poor people, just reflexively. I can’t be the only poor white kid who got The Shunning by my wealthier friends’ parents. My parents were *gasp* poor and **double gasp** divorced, and so naturally in some peoples’ eyes we were just all drug-snorting, whoring freaks.

The reason my friend Wendy ended up blowing her life savings on her first round of chemo, was because she contracted ovarian cancer on Student Insurance, while going back to get her PHD.

The cap on that policy was $50,000, to get the doctor to continue treatment, Wendy and her mother had to fork out another $40,000.

Most middle class conservatives don’t actually hate the poor; they just hate brown people and want to mask it.

Oh, they definitely hate the poor, but you’re right that race is very much mixed up in it as well.

Indeed, many poor whites are conservative because they feel like, as white people, they deserve more than what they’re getting in life, and they blame those lazy brown people who are sitting around collecting welfare and [insert fifteen more stereotypes here].

But as a working-class white person, I assure you, I’ve been exposed to plenty of hatred from my upper-middle-class white social “betters.”

To clarify, I grew up pretty economically privileged. But I’ve worked for wages all my adult life. And try working in any customer service function for a retail outlet or restaurant or whatever that happens to cater primarily to upper-middle-class white customers, and you can practically feel the seething disdain coming off of them.

Call your student-loan people & ask about unemployment forbearance

Thanks for the advice, but I already know that I can do this and have decided not to yet.  I saved up a lot of money so that I would be prepared if I got laid off, and I don’t really want to start accumulating extra interest until I absolutely have to.  I should be getting a job offer in the next couple of weeks, but if that doesn’t come through for some reason then I will start making more drastic cuts.  The $180 a month in student loans is nothing compared to my $1100 monthly rent, so my first step would be moving in my mom.  I can’t imagine any single person paying rent or mortgage with just unemployment.

I’m a healthy individual, I don’t have any disclosable pre-existings, and the feds tax my spouse’s earnings as if the health insurance she gets for me through work cost $10K a year.  That’s no $300 a month.  And this is the health insurance that decided this year that since care for my I-got-it-in-a-NYC-spring pneumonia was quick and efficient, I should have to pay out of pocket.

Ugh.  We pay more in taxes on my health insurance than this mythical guy was supposed to be paying on his care.

  I can’t imagine any single person paying rent or mortgage with just unemployment.

Rare but not impossible. Impossible if there are large student loan payments to deal with as well, I’d imagine. My unemployment insurance paid my rent, my food, and my phone bills. Savings had to cover the COBRA payments, which, ow. But I was lucky to be clear of loans before I got laid off, and lucky to have seriously cheap rent.

General Motors could compete much better with foreign manufacturers like Toyota, Hyundai, Saab, etc. if it didn’t have to spend a fortune on megacorporate health insurance for workers.

Considering both Toyota and Hyundai hire a shit ton of people in the United States and General Motors hires a shit ton of people in other countries besides United States I doubt this really makes any difference on their “competitiveness.”

And universal healthcare sure hasn’t stopped GM from shutting down several factories in Ontario over the past couple of years.

If Hypothetical Good Job Dude is only in his thirties, than maybe it’s not so much that Hypothetical Good Job Dude doesn’t feel like spending $200-300/month on (apparently the country’s cheapest) health insurance, but that he can’t afford to because he has to spend that $200-$300/month on student loan payments instead?

Sorry if that’s a derail, but I’m in a serious “student loans can go fuck themselves” sort of mood lately.

Excellent post.  20 years ago, I purchased private health insurance for a few months between jobs.  As I recall, it was in the $200-300/month range then, 20 years ago, and it was basically a major medical coverage, just something to hopefully ensure that I didn’t go bankrupt if I had to have surgery.  Even though I was young and healthy, I did that because I had had a medical scare while I had health insurance and finding out I didn’t have cancer ran into the five figure range.  Luckily I was insured then.  Cobra, as I recall was over $400/month.  I wouldn’t be surprised if a basic individual policy is around $1000 or more monthly today.

At some stage you people are going to have to look into Madame La Guillotine.  I wouldn’t be surprised if, with the Wall Street protesters being beaten down and arrested, somebody started taking shots at brokers.

I wouldn’t be surprised, either. But the person doing the shooting, while looking like a protestor, will be in fact an agent for the bankers. And the shooting will become the excuse for the “temporary” shelving of what remains of our civil liberties.

The situation with insurance cover in the US borders on the insane.  Here in Australia, we pay a (mandatory) grand total of 1.5% of our annual income in Medicare, and for that we are pretty much covered for EVERYTHING. To put it in perspective, a single person on the average wage here (about $5,000 a month) would pay a grand total of 17 bucks a week and be entitled to everything our health system has to offer.

Here’s a good example: three years ago my mother had a massive heart attack and had to be airlifted to a major hospital about 1,000kms away. She was there for 2 weeks, and had a quadruple bypass and a bunch of skin grafts. Not only was everything covered, her airfare home on a commercial flight was even paid for ($350) because she lived outside a major metropolitan area.  The cost of her operation and stay in the hospital ran to about $60,000, and she was not out of pocket one cent.

To hear stories like the ones above makes me wonder how the Right can continue to campaign against universal health care, when all around the world there are startling examples of its effectiveness in keeping people safe and well.

@67

A friend of mine once said “fascism is capitalism in crisis.” If and when they deem it necessary, the plutocrats will resort to violence and the curtailment of civil liberties to maintain their position at the top of the ladder. And if America goes down that road, the Tea Partiers will be the plutocrats’ willing thugs.

To hear stories like the ones above makes me wonder how the Right can continue to campaign against universal health care, when all around the world there are startling examples of its effectiveness in keeping people safe and well.

Because when you tell conservatives how things are in the rest of the world, they put their fingers in their ears and shout about how America is the best at everything.

Not only does the current system suck, it’s expensive too:  http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/OECD042111.cfm

I was without health insurance when I graduated from college at 23 and was no longer allowed on my parents’ plan. Since a job didn’t appear out of nowhere the day I graduated, I did the “right” thing and went and bought a plan that covered “catastrophic” incidents. Just like Ron Paul said to! I ended up paying full price for minor doctor’s visits and prescriptions, like antibiotics for a UTI. Doctor’s visits cost so much I just stopped going, and decided I’d only seek medical care if it was something horrendous. Guess what? Something borderline “catastrophic” DID happen after many months of paying premiums, and they fought me tooth and nail not to cover it. Even when they did, my parents had to foot the bill because there was no way I could pay with that kind of deductible. I’m LUCKY I had parents to pay it. And don’t forget the hoops you have to jump through to find a doctor who will take your insurance. Health insurance has been my #1 cause of stress and financial problems for more than 2 years now. They say 80% of Americans are happy with their health care? I bet that’s the 80% who never actually use it. Everyone I know who actually has to, you know, use the insurance (especially for something major) can’t vent enough how much the system screws you, even if you did the right things.

It really needs to be hammered home—because I think a lot of conservatives really don’t get this—is that the regular rules of the free market don’t apply here. With most industries, they try to sell you the best product at the best price, and hope people enjoy the product they paid for so they’ll come back again. With health insurance, their profits come from having you buy something (the premium) and never providing anything in return. If an Apple computer benefits you and you decide to keep returning to them, it helps Apple’s bottom line. If health insurance benefits you (by having your health needs covered), it hurts their bottom line. Their hope is that you’ll buy insurance and never get sick, because most people won’t—but as soon as you do, they have to protect their bottom line by screwing you. And this isn’t like Verizon screwing you on a cell contract. This is your life.

Right on about the contracting and freelancing.  I’d add to that: temp to perm positions, where for 3 months or more you don’t have any insurance.  Also right on about the kind of money involved.  $300 is not going to get you the good plans.  The types of plans you get as a full time employee for a group rate run closer to $600 a month for an individual.  Not that correct numbers would help the debate, its all play money to Republicans in any case.

General Motors could compete much better with foreign manufacturers like Toyota, Hyundai, Saab, etc. if it didn’t have to spend a fortune on megacorporate health insurance for workers.

My dad worked for GM. Please explain to me what this megacorportate health insurance is? I didn’t realize asthma medication and getting your hand stitched up were a luxury for elites.

@ Scrumby, her point is not that the insurance is good or extravagant, but that there are thousands upon thousands of employees for GM to cover (about 210,000 employees worldwide, not sure how many in the US), which is exactly why your dad’s insurance probably sucks.

Scrumby, her point is not that the insurance is good or extravagant, but that there are thousands upon thousands of employees for GM to cover (about 210,000 employees worldwide, not sure how many in the US), which is exactly why your dad’s insurance probably sucks.

Also don’t forget retirees—- GM covers retired employees who haven’t yet qualified for medicare, as well as offering insurance to their families. This is actually a huge benefit, particularly if the retired GM employee is older than the spouse who is below medicare age, meaning that the spouse doesn’t have to keep working just for health insurance.

I’d add to that: temp to perm positions, where for 3 months or more you don’t have any insurance.

In states where they can get away with it, companies will keep you in temp-to-hire hell for as long as possible. Supposedly after three months, your temp assignment ends and they hire you on permanently. Instead, they’ll just renew the assignment. I know people who’ve been in the same temp-to-hire position for 2+ years. And that’s 2+ years without health benefits, paid vacation, anything, and as an added bonus they’re still in that awkward situation where their employer can fire them with incredible ease so they’d better not fuck up in the slightest.

Ah, living in the Southeast…

@ Scrumby, her point is not that the insurance is good or extravagant, but that there are thousands upon thousands of employees for GM to cover (about 210,000 employees worldwide, not sure how many in the US), which is exactly why your dad’s insurance probably sucks.

It didn’t suck. It covered everything from major procedures to basic teeth cleaning with minimal fuss and fighting which is how insurance should be. GM took good care of it’s employees and the idea that that is what lead to their downfall is just more toxic ideology. If squeezing your workers as much as possible is what accounts for your success then you’re a lousy company.

Whenever I read one of these threads - American Pandagonians telling tales of insurance woes - I’m absolutely gobsmacked by the cost of your insurance.  My other half was offered health insurance by his employer for a few years - this is in London - for a gold-plated, cover everything, no co-pay (which I think is the US equivalent of an excess?), it cost us something like £25 a month.  To cover me as well wouldn’t have cost much more.  After a little while, we decided not to bother - that’s what the NHS is there for.

It’s worth noting that when you get travel insurance here, if you are going to the US, your premium goes up massively, purely because of the costs of health care.

“There is no such thing as “good job” that doesn’t have insurance benefits.”

This is the point here.  Good jobs HAVE INSURANCE.  (At least until the revolution and we all get Medicare - $96.40 a month per person!) 

And, at least in my 15 years in construction, the employer pays for the employee, so paying anything out of pocket for insurance just for yourself - with that GOOD JOB - doesn’t typically happen.  Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a good job.  I would bet that most companies cover the employee, and even in my experience they have partially covered the family premium. 

But what does anybody expect from Wealthy Celebrity Wolf Blitzer talking to Millionaire Presidential Candidate Ron Paul? 

These people do not live in the real world inhabited by People Like Us.

Although comments above about Galtboys ring true to me, too.  “Nothing can happen to Smarty Pants ME!”

Wow.  How naive I feel.  As a Canadian, I had no idea how insane individual health insurance rates were in your country.  I assumed they were a “reasonable” $180-$300 per month.  Never did I dream that $600/mo would be the dominant price.  Even if I calculate the difference in taxes, with my new much higher wage, I’m still not paying anywhere near that, including the almost pitiful amount that the additional coverage for drugs and dental costs me.

But even when my wage was much lower, and my taxes also lower, my health coverage was not significantly worse, which is clearly not the case for many of you here.  Universal single-payer health care has its fair share of problems, but they’re nothing compared to what you’re complaining about here.  So, when you hear complaints about health care in Canada, keep in mind that for most of us, it’s like complaining about a slightly inferior version of your favourite food.  It’s still good, but not as good as it perhaps could’ve been.

Disclaimer:  I am employed in health care these days, though far away from patient care.

@Scrumby #75:  Thanks for clarifying.  So, can the fact that GM had to pay dearly for really good private health insurance for its US employees be added to the long list of why it went bankrupt?

@83

Funding private health insurance was but one of the many factors leading to the GM BK in 2009. 

But, let’s also not forget that GM’s sales were down 45% in 2008, GM Europe was in financial trouble to the tune of about 50 billion, and there was some mismanagement going on at the top levels, so much so that the CEO was forced to resign by the White House.

I have a feeling that executive pay and bonuses, combined with general financial mismanagement at the executive levels (they were flying to hearings in corporate jets), had a whole lot more to do with GM’s BK than buying health insurance for the employees did.