My Health Insurance Rant

I got this e-mail from Senator Russ Feingold asking my opinion about upcoming health care legislation in Congress. Well, I let it all hang out:

I have been in business for myself since 1992. From 1992 to 1999, my wife, who has a degree from the University of California, Berkeley, kept a job that she was way overqualified for mainly for benefits for she and I and our younger daughter. Finally, revenues from my business reached a point where we could afford health care ourselves, expensive as it was.

However, several years before 1999, my wife had a bout with sarcoidosis, and the first time we applied to GHC, the plan that worked best for us, we were turned down because of this preexisting condition. However, because we were friends with an influential doctor who worked for GHC, he intervened on our behalf, and we were accepted.

However, the charges every year went up by double digits, and by 2008, the last year we were on this plan before joining Medicare, our price for two adults who seldom went to the doctor, was $1,175 a month, with a $30 co-pay and no drug coverage. If we had continued through 2008, our total outlay for that year for two healthy adults would have been $14,100. And I am sure it would have cost more in 2009.

Small business people and individuals basically get taken to the cleaners by our current system. I have long favored single-payer health care. That is essentially what Medicare is, and it seems to be working fine. In fact, let those Republicans who are screaming about public insurance consider doing away with Medicare, and see how quickly they are not reelected.

I think we need universal health care. Health care is not a privilege but a right in a civilized, developed country. My own belief is the cost of health insurance in this country could be greatly reduced by having a single-payer system that reduces the overhead of insurance companies, who spend way too much time figuring out what not to cover rather than simply being there for people when insurance is needed.

Also, for those Republicans who think our taxes would go up dramatically, I say, what do you think that $14,100 I would have paid in 2008 to GHC is? If that is not the same as a tax, I don't know what it is. I am sure I would have paid less for a public plan.

It seems we are not mature or realistic enough politically to go for a single payer system, but I believe that a public plan is important. And if the Republicans don't want to go along, I say do it through what I believe is called "reconciliation," where you don't need 60 votes to close debate and pass a new piece of legislation. I say do not let the ideologically bound Republicans stand in the way this time.

Finally, one other thing: Connecting health insurance to employment is crazy. In this current economic debacle, people aren't just losing their jobs, they're losing the health insurance as well. That doesn't make any sense. Imagine if that were you.

And yet one more thing: If health insurance is not connected to employment, this would free people to go to the kind of work they want to do without fear of losing their insurance. It would open the door to more contract employment and freelance work. It would make the workplace more efficient because people would be engaged in the work for which they are best suited, rather than just jobs that provide those vital benefits. Far too many people take jobs they don't like or that are not consistent with their skills simply for health insurance. That's a terrible state of affairs.

Senator Feingold, I hope you get a chance to read this. Health care has been an issue for me for a long time. Let's fix it this time.