Does the Cost of Your Health Insurance Make you Sick?

Fri, 15 May 2009 01:36:00 GMT

     I remember as a child being accident prone, and hazard lucky. My parents always encouraged me to go out and play. Now that I think about it, what else was there to do. The only exception was maybe listening to songs on the record player. Like many kids in our neighborhood, I somehow managed to injure myself on a regular basis. Falling out of climbing-trees and launching my bicycle off homemade wooden ramps was normal. If my injuries required more than a butterfly band-aid and hydrogen peroxide, off to the doctor we went. My parents had a neat little card they gave to the doctor, but I never did see them make a co-payment. Even the local emergency room gave me a frequent visitor card, and it was free with no strings attached.
     Flash forward many years and now most people still get an insurance card, but there are strings attached. Every time I go to see a doctor, there is a co-pay and sometimes a deductible. If I am really lucky the rest of the visit will be covered 80%. I have seen other people have to leave the doctor’s office without being seen because they did not have enough money to cover the co-payment. The doctor would not turn them away, but I suppose the people where embarrassed. What has happened to the American health system. How can it be, that hardworking people who pay taxes and social security and spend a third of their life each year making money for someone else, barely be able to afford to go to the doctor?
     I read somewhere that President Obama has released his outline for social healthcare. It is not cheap. I read something like 2 Trillion dollars over the next 10-12 years. It supposedly will be available to those who want to use it. Wow, sounds great, but who’s paying? If a social healthcare plan is coming, are we going to have to pay more taxes? This leads me to think that maybe I could opt out of paying for private healthcare, and just pay a few more dollars in taxes and elect the social health plan. The major health insurance carriers must be gnawing at the bit. If they were to lose a high percentage of their members, say 20% or greater, their earnings would surely tumble.

Do any social healthcare plans really work? Take Canada for instance. I used to work with a person from Canada who told me that private insurance is much better and actually costs less in comparison to the taxed rate of each pay check. He even mentioned that a small percentage of Canadians would make trips to the U.S. to seek medical treatment, especially if they had been put on a 2-3 month waiting list before they could start treatments like Chemotherapy or Dialysis. Maybe having a social insurance plan would force major insurance carriers to lower their rates and actually become more affordable. If you currently pay for health insurance, are your deductions taken from your paycheck, taken out pretax? If the American government wants to help people who can not afford private healthcare, should they do something for those that do have private healthcare? Maybe instead of not taxing insurance deductions, they instead could allow some or all the insurance costs be written off at the end of the year.
But, if people choose to have private health insurance, should they also have their taxes increased to pay the costs of social health insurance? I know that I worry about being able to afford health insurance year after year, especially with rates going up by an average of 7-10% each January. I also get concerned with taxes going up. If insurance premiums and taxes both go up, how many Americans will be left out in the cold?

Consider This!

Does the Cost of Your Health Insurance Make you Sick?