American Health Care

Typically speaking, Health insurance is provided by an employer via a third party. When I worked for Universal, it was via Cigna. When you leave your employer, you begin to interact with an entity entitled "Cobra". Cobra health insurance is expensive, and a bitch to get into. Cobra is a system set up for the continuation of coverage. First, You have to elect to get into it, and pay a massive amount of money each month, and if you miss a payment, they drop you without a chance for recourse. Don't ask me how you're supposed to pay a larger amount of money than you did at your job, when you are between jobs at the time, but they expect you to. I had to wait, first to get the money for this payment. Once sent in, it takes 7-10 business days for it to become enacted. Mine took longer. COBRA also tells you that their is no lapse in coverage. This is not true. They reimburse you for what you spent trying to maintain your coverage. After all of this is through, you are then required to request the forms for your medications, doctor visits, and/or lab visits. Each form can take 7-10 business days to receive. The real stupidity of the system is that this all takes place through the same carrier. All of this work is done, but you end up with the same coverage, in the same plan, and the only thing they did was modify where payment was coming from. This took about a month for me to wade through. Once I thought I had finished all of this, I went to get a medication I need, only to be told that the people handling this coverage change had absolutely no record of me via my name, my social security number, or my birth date. Before I learned this though, they managed to send me a correction of my bill, which now led to a deficit in my payment by over $100. I don't know how they had no record of me, yet managed to adjust my bill.

While we as a nation utilize this system, we only put ourselves into a difficult situation. Many of the benefits we are told don't exist in Socialized medicine, don't exist in our system either. We are told that doctor visits are slower when the government takes over medicine. The reality is that we aren't seeing our doctors all that quickly as it is. I tried to make an appointment with a doctor, and the first available chance was a month away. This is hardly quick. We are also led to believe that it is difficult to get the medical care we need, but that is simply not true. Medical care in the EU operates easier and more seamlessly than the health care in the States. Having also studied Socialized medicine, they also don't, by in large, have a cover charge. For me to go to the E.R. I have to pay $125 on my current plan, and $20 or $40 per medication I need. I require two separate prescriptions each month. Without coverage, my prescriptions would cost me about $319/month all told. I have to spend $385/month for coverage. Without doctor visits and/or E.R. visits, it would be cheaper for me to not worry about insurance at all. The only reason I maintain any type of coverage at all is because I have a team of doctors that requires I be covered in some way. Now, you would think this would make it relatively easy for me to see my doctor, even any doctor of my choice. It doesn't though, instead, I'm stuck dealing with doctors who are covered by my insurance, and these doctors may or may not be covered by any two I switch between. After seeing my own doctor, in some way, if he decides I need to see a specialist, now I need a referral, just to see someone my doctor tells me I need to see. This process can take a week or more for the referral to go through, meanwhile, I'm suffering whatever my ailment is. Through socialized medicine, these problems don't exist. In our system, I get stuck wading through red tape while suffering my ailment, which may or may not be dangerous to other people, at the very least, it's inconvenient. Provided I get past the idea of referrals, once my doctor requests tests be done, now I'm stuck with the job of finding an approved lab for some simple blood work, x-rays, or whatever tests need to be done. This system of approval does nothing but leave me suffering for no real reason.

While I'm not sure if I would prefer government funded health care; I do believe that our current system is broken. I think the word 'broken' is a little bit... gentle to describe it. Our system leaves many people uncovered, and those who are covered, are stuck wading through a sea of red tape. I hope that one day, we will realize that our system is deficient and find a manner to fix it. One day, Americans will learn that business and government both have the same interest in mind: their own self-interests. When we have people doing things right, self-interest will take a back seat to the needs of the people. When the right people have come into power, only then will we have a "government of the people, by the people, for the people."