Dec 30th, 2007
Do Healthcare Costs Affect Your Choices?
One of the costs that we face in America that is rising far faster than inflation is health care. In this country, the vast majority (though by no means all, sadly) of Americans have some form of health insurance which helps to relieve medical expenses. Health insurance is typically earned through a benefit of employment (either your own, your significant other’s, or a parent’s in the case of a minor child or young adult student), paid for outright, or provided by the government (in the case of Medicare or Medicaid).
Health insurance, like health care, can be expensive. One of the underrated benefits of my current job is the health insurance provided; to cover myself and my mother I basically pay tax (approximately $75 a month) to get a plan with no inpatient hospital stay copay, $10 office visits, and $7/30 day prescription drug coverage (or $14/90 days if I use their mail order service). In other words, my coverage is excellent.
What’s weird about that is that the benefit is actually worse now than what I had a few years ago, which had free office visits and $3/30 day prescription drug coverage. So even when coverage is by all estimations excellent, it used to be even better, at least in my case. Copays are increasing as the purchasers of insurance–typically employers–find ways to keep the effects of the rising cost of that insurance from impinging on their bottom line.
It unfortunately gets worse. Health insurance seems to be one of the areas where the term “social justice” doesn’t mean a lot. At the hospital where I work, the people who get paid the best–the physicians–have the coverage with no copays (or very minimal ones). The people who get paid the least–the housekeepers, receptionists, and transporters–have coverage that’s about the same as mine, if not a bit worse. If you go outside of the setting of the hospital, the situation continues to escalate. Fast food employees who make minimum wage typically have health insurance that’s absolutely horrid by my standard–$200/day inpatient hospital copay, 50% lab and diagnostic imaging copay, and no drug coverage whatsoever.
All this means that those who actually can afford the most out of pocket pay the least and those who can afford the least pay the most–unless and until they end up on Medicaid (or your state’s equivalent of it), where they end up paying the least out of pocket–but every taxpayer in America ends up paying the rest.
This is not to say that those who work hard and have great jobs don’t deserve great coverage–they do. Traditionally in this country, benefits of employment, including health insurance, have been a big part of what makes people decide to work where they do. One of the things I think about a lot when I consider my current job situation is what health insurance benefits might look like where I end up working next, and it makes me think long and hard about staying where I am. But it’s a really different situation for someone who has a master’s degree and many options for work than it is for someone who is barely literate and can’t find much in the way of work that’s not minimum wage.
There are no easy answers, unfortunately. The government talks a lot about reforming Social Security, a system with some significant but relatively easily fixable–at least for quite a few years–problems, but they almost never talk about a program with problems four times as large–Medicare.
If nothing else, the issues of health insurance hit home for me personally as an employee of a health care organization. Yes, I like it when my salary increases, but no, I don’t like it when the cost of my health care goes up. Yes, I like it when the organization does well financially, but no, I don’t like it when more and more of my tax dollars goes to paying for health care for those who are injured while under the influence of substances or blatantly negligent. I wish I could just wave a magic wand and say, “Here! It’s fixed!” Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. I’m not really sure how to fix this mess, but it’s clear this will be an issue from now until I die.
One of the ways that the costs of health care affects me is in some of the choices I make. It’s not a secret to some of the folks who read my blog that back in early 2002, before I was diagnosed with diabetes, I weighed 265 pounds (by my doctor’s scale, 272). I now weigh 185 and have done a couple of 100 mile bike rides and plan on doing another this year and running a marathon as well. What I’m hoping is that not only will making better choices about my health help me live longer and healthier, it will save me money and keep medical expenses for everyone–not just me but my employer–down.
Does health insurance affect your bottom line and/or your choices in life? If so, how?
