and on healthcare

[dragonlady7]

Am I bored today? I must be, I'm reading Artvoice. Just kidding.
Here's another gem of omg-wow-that's-my-life:
On Healthcare

Yesterday at work, we all received the annual “bad news” envelope. Enclosed was the memo stating that next year our company’s healthcare premium would increase by 21 percent! How is this possible? With all the handwringing about healthcare costs being out of sight, hospital closings, consolidations and increased co-pays, how in the world could it jump that much? This means that even with my employer contributing to the plan, I will pay in excess of $7,000 next year to cover my wife, my daughter and myself. Now, the average household income in the Buffalo area is approximately $37,000, and many of my co-workers make this amount or less. When I ask them how they can afford to spend almost 20 percent of their income on healthcare, I found that many of them don’t. With mortgage and car payments, utilities, food and other necessities, they can’t afford the luxury of our company’s healthcare plan. These are conscientious, intelligent family men that need to forego an essential component of safeguarding their families because of cost. It’s not an “option that they have elected not to pursue,” as I have heard stated repeatedly by those who like the system as it presently exists. Just because a healthcare plan is made available to employees doesn’t automatically make it possible for them to participate.

Comments

[buschibaby.livejournal.com]

Bloody hell. God bless the NHS.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Smug bastard.

[buschibaby.livejournal.com]

We're heading towards a similar system to yours if we're not careful, so I'm going to be smug for as long as I can. There's already a fairly visible two-tier system, with those who can afford private healthcare being treated faster and better than those who rely on the NHS. It took me ten weeks to get what was supposed to be a two-week maximum suspected cancer referral (fortunatly it was just a bizarrely placed endometrial growth, fact-fans), and it would have taken me a hell of a lot longer had I not been an articulate English-speaker who bullied them every time they fucked up. The system's going down and it's an absolute tragedy.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Well, our system routinely denies claims for the hell of it, regardless of whether you can pay or not. I have an online friend who is in her forties and highly educated and articulate, and has migraines 9 days out of every 10. She recently tried a drug mostly used for nerve problems, and it cured her. She cannot get it covered by her insurance. She pays several hundred dollars a month for this insurance. She is, as she has pointed out herself, approximately as priveleged as one can get, being white, articulate, and rich, though not quite rich enough to afford the medication on her own.

And what do you think of the story of the 17-year-old girl who was denied a liver transplant because, while she'd die without it, with it she only had a 65% chance of survival? She died yesterday or the day before, and her family are suing the insurance company for manslaughter. Good fucking luck to them.

It's tiring to always have to be your own advocate, and it's something I'm terrible at. We worry that a system like the NHS wouldn't work, but we are confronted with the inescapable realization that a system like ours plain old doesn't, so personally, I'd take theoretical future failure over actual current failure any day.