And I just happen to work for the only national one out there. By banding together over a million people who are all paying for their own H.I., we can give batter rates, we can give much stronger coverage, we can at least limit rate increases, they are few and far between compaired to the national average of 15-30% annually which most individual plans are subjected to. Is it full coverage with zero dollar out of pocket costs and $5 premiums? No, of course not, but it is fair coverage at reasonable costs. I don’t know what else anyone could want.
Sorry, I just looked at our bill and while we used to be billed bi-monthly, they are now apparently billing us quarterly. That means we are paying about $265 per month, not $400 as I had thought.
The giant deductible, no frills, no prescriptions, no doctor visits, no tests as well as the truck scenario still applies.
Oh, and thank you Weirddave!
starts humming ‘America the Beautiful’
Woo-hoo! Less than a week until my 23rd birthday- which means I’ll no longer be covered under my parents’ health insurance. I look forward to wondering if every cough is going to be the one that leads me to bankrupcy, if every step will lead to the $10,000 broken leg that will plunge me into unspeakable debt. My friend just spent a week in the hospital for a freak lung infection- just think- pretty soon if something like that happens to me, it will literally ruin my life!
Yay!!! Now I gotta go make an appointment at Planned Parenthood so I can continue my birth control habit…
So, why is it that everyone I’ve ever met from the US thinks that yer guys’ health system is better than ours? (Here in Canada, I mean.)
N.B. I’m not trying to be cranky - every person I know from the US thinks the US plan is better, but I read OP’s like this and see stories on TV with patients lining the halls in hospitals and stuff and I wonder what the heck these folks are thinking.
I would have thought the same, IzzyR, but when I enrolled in COBRA, I found out its not always the case. I had elected an HMO option, but when their open enrollment period came along, my rates went up by about $80 for single coverage. For that reason I started looking into other non-COBRA options. I found Kaiser to be a very good deal at around $180 a month, which is quite a bit less than what I was paying for Blue Cross COBRA HMO. I just received new open-enrollment materials from my employer (because of a change in plans, they had another open-enrollment in the middle of their plan year), and their Kaiser COBRA rate is $50 higher than what I will be paying with Kaiser’s individual insurance rates. The benefits appear identical.
IOW, depending on the makeup of a company’s workforce, it’s possible that the rates paid for the employee (by the company) to be higher than what would be charged to one employee if he/she were to purchase an individual plan (it seems my former co-workers are all young hypochondriac Berkeley/Stanford degreed engineers.)
They’re thinking “I’ve got mine…”
It’s not just possible, it’s inevitable, and makes perfect sense. An employee sponsored health plan is required by law to accept everyone reguardless of any pre-existing helth conditions and is priced accordingly. All COBRA says is that you get to keep the coverage for 18 months at the same rate your employeer pays. An individual health plan which is underwritten ( so they can refuse to cover people with pre existing conditions ) is often going to be cheeper because it’s more selective in who it lets in. That make sense?
And Sven, I can’t see you payin more than $150/month or so for very complete coverage, more than you prolly need, actually. If you just want coverage for big stuff like hospitalizations and tests and are willing to pay for the little stuff yourself ( like Dr. visits-how many times a year do you actually go at 23? 1? 3, maybe? ) it should be quite a bit less.
A lot of it has to do with that whole simplistic “socialized” medicine boogeyman peddled by opponents of a national health care system. If the focus is on costs to the individual, its silly to think that the US Plan (what little of a plan it is) is better.
If the focus is on convenience/freedom of choice matters, their may be benefits to what we have set up here than in countries with a nationalized system. Then again, we are bombarded with horror stories of year long waiting periods/bureaucratic inflexibility/Hillary Clinton involvement/etc. to convince us (or the simpletons among our citizenry) that “no plan” is a good plan.
Weirddave, I’m emailing you. The latest quote I’ve gotten is close to $600. Eep!
If I had $150 a month that’d mean I’d only be going into debt $350 each month for rent. Being unemployed sucks as is, but now it’s about to get hardcore scary. :eek:
Weirddave, I’m in kind of the same spot as the OP, I’m self employed and I live in Houston, could you maybe email me if you have any advice? I have been without insurance for almost a year.
Sure, It’ll only cost you one of those great caricatures. 
Seriously, drop me an email and I’ll reply this weekend. Several other people have asked, and I’m going to get a response out to everyone then. Happy to help.
I don’t think the US “plan” is better.
I work for a Fortune 500 company (one that’s way up on the list) and have superb health and dental insurance. I had a bout with influenza a few weeks ago, and was able to see a doctor within 3 hours of deciding to do so. I payed $45 for an exam, a throat culture, an influenza test, and a Tamiflu prescription. The American system at its middle-class best.
However, I have family members and friends who aren’t so fortunate, and someday I may loose my job. I’d love to have socialized medicine and would be perfectly willing to take a substantial tax hike for it. I’d be willing to accept longer waits for lesser illnesses. The security of knowing myself and my loved ones would be worth it. There’s also that whole humanitarian aspect of helping the people I don’t know as well.
Nah, I’ve got mine now, but I didn’t always. When I was fresh out of grad school and working a crappy admin job, I broke my leg in a zillion places, two days short of the insurance kicking in on my new job. I was in the hospital for 2 weeks, and even though the insurance covered everything once it kicked in (yay to the state law that requires group plans to cover pre-existing conditions in most cases), the first 2 days of care cost me around $4500 out of pocket. Took me years to pay it off. And if the coverage on my new job either didn’t exist or didn’t cover preexisting conditions, I’d have been out $100 k for several surgeries, hospital stays, and hundreds of hours of rehab. No way in hell would I ever have been able to pay that off, unless I have some rich relatives I don’t know about who are planning to leave me all their money. I’d have had to declare bankruptcy.
I’d gladly fork over more taxes for the security of knowing nothing like that would ever happen to me, or anyone else in this country, again. I was just in England and had what I feared was another foot issue; not knowing what it was, and fearing that it would be something that would be aggravated by walking around on it, I had my friend get me in to see her doc through the British nationalized system. They got me in the same day, gave me some excellent common-sense advice and a recommendation for an OTC topical analgesic which solved the issue in a couple of days and cost about $1. The appointment fee was about $40, which they waived because they were feeling nice.
No way would that have happened in the States; I have great insurance, and here it still took me 2 months to get in to see a specialist, and the appointment alone would have cost $150 or so without negotiated PPO discounts, plus Lord knows what for X-rays, etc. Given a choice, I’d rather have the British system almost all of the time. My friend in England has 2 small kids, and when she was pregnant and nursing, she got home visits form a midwife, at no extra charge. She never has to wait more than a few days for routine care. Is the small proportion of the time when high-tech fancy stuff is really necessary worth depriving a large minority of our population of basic health care, because a routine physical can easily cost as much as a month’s rent?
I’ve lived under both. This one sucks.
Thankfully, my father-in-law (Weirddave’s Dad) is a (retired) doctor, so any minor things and prescriptions are taken care of by him.
I look at my friend’s husband, who needs his gallbladder out but has to wait for their insurance to kick in - and remember that two years ago, I didn’t pay a cent to have mine removed.
Some socialism is a good thing. But then, Dave would need a new job, and he’re really good at this one.
I just want to chime in that Weirddave is wonderful about this sort of thing. He called me long distance some time ago to help me sort out my options when Mr. Legend’s COBRA coverage was about to expire, even though I’m in a different area and he knew he wouldn’t be able to make a sale. Thanks again, Weirddave!
So (to continue my hijack - sorry OP) I’ve seen TV programs (which, admittedly aren’t a super judge of reality, but bear with me) and there will be patients stacked up in gurnies in the hall waiting to see a Dr.
I have NEVER seen that in Canada, anywhere. Not that you never wait, but it just seems like if you wait, you don’t wait in the hall. I’m thinking Philadelphia when Tom Hanks character had to have his consult in the hall way, or law and order where people seem to be stacked 2 deep in hallways waiting to be seen. In one episode I think someone actually died before they were seen. So - is any of this true, or is it just holywood stuff?
Hey, I have spent some time in Canada too. Even paying out of pocket, the costs were nothing like they are here. I need my yearly check-up next week. I’m unemployed (well, shakily self-employed), in debt already, I just had to give up my car, and I have to make sure I have enough money to pay bills the next couple months if I don’t sell anything.
The damage? $250, the nurse said. That doesn’t include my prescriptions. But I honestly can’t go without them. Not to mention I have really bad anxiety problems, and haven’t been able to talk to my GP about them for the last year almost because that’s when my health insurance ended, when I had to leave my last job. I’m praying I don’t get that flu that’s going around. When I get stick, I just deal with it. I’ve been off and on with insurance since I was 18. I get cold sores really bad too, my prescription medicine for that is $35 (and I have no idea why I can’t just get it over the counter, not like you can get high or kill yourself with a tiny tube of ointment). But they never give me refills, they want to make me come back, so no more medicine for me because I can’t afford to go to the doctor and beg him to throw me another scrip. It’s just sad.
A few years ago, I needed my wisdom teeth out very badly, but again, had no insurance. I’m talking severely impacted, smashing against the roots of my back teeth, crippling headaches, bad. And for three months it got worse and worse, while I waited for health insurance to kick in from my job. By the time I got them removed, the roots of the teeth were so entrenched in my jaw, that I got some permanent nerve damage and now have a big numb spot on my chin, lip, and gums (basically a big chunk of the lower left side of my face) that will never go away. If I’d been able to have them out within a reasonable amount of time of that happening, that probably would never have occurred.
Health care in this country SUCKS.
Hm…I’m in the nightclub industry and I was just wondering…what is this…“health insurance” thing you speak of?