health insurance rant

I just came across this article in Slate about what happens under the Obama health insurance plan if you don't have health insurance. Like the current health insurance plan in Massachusetts, if you don't have health insurance you have to pay a tax penalty.

I don't know much about the Obama plan. I'm a progressive. Therefore I think health care reform is good. Although what I really want is socialized medicine, where we don't pay premiums, we pay taxes.

Nevertheless, I despise the most progressive health care law in America, under which I live: the Massachusetts health care plan.

My husband and I are both self-employed, so we have to pay for own health insurance. Nine years ago I had a Blue Cross plan through COBRA. It cost about $700 a month, as I recall. My COBRA ran out, so we signed up for our own Blue Cross plan, for about $100 more a month. There were approximately annual increases, until finally we were paying $1,400 a month for health insurance, which is significantly more than our mortgage and more than we can afford.

Now don't get me wrong, we're not poor. But we are broke, in debt, struggling. My husband idiotically get over his head with consumer debt--just because he's an idiot, no good reason like drug addiction or a gambling habit--and his entire income goes to his minimum monthly payments on his debt, with anything left over going to pay his income taxes on which he has fallen more and more behind. My income supports our family, and not particularly well. As in, I get anxiety attacks thinking about how I'm going to pay for day camp for my kids so I can work this summer, but I will pay for it, perhaps going in to debt a little to do so. We have have little retirement savings (we are in our mid and late forties) and have put away approximately $0 for our kids to go to college.

Now, somewhere along the line of this story Massachusetts passed health care reform,, making it illegal for us not to have health insurance. Not that I would ever consider going bare. I have two kids.

Last summer we signed up for a new health care plan that seemed to be perfect for us. It's basically a catastrophic loss plan. Our premium is about $300 a month, we pay out of pocket for almost everything, we have no prescription coverage, and the plan kicks in after we spend about $10,000 or so for care.

And why can we do this? Because Massachusetts original health care reform, under Governor and former presidential candidate Dukakis, who I know consider my hero, required that any health plan doing business in Massachusetts accept new members regardless of pre-existing conditions. That means that if we get into an accident or get a serious diagnosis, we can switch back to Blue Cross in 24 hours.

In December Massachusetts declared that our new plan was illegal.

Now, I want to explain that the Massachusetts plan helps us not one bit. It makes it illegal for us to not have an approved health insurance plan, but it doesn't provide any help for us. We're over-income for that.

I also personally know at least two people who have moved to Massachusetts so that they can take advantage of the free health-care plan for low income people, and not have to bother to get a job. One of these people is physically disabled. Although I think she could make a decent income with a little effort, I'm not about to argue with SSI.

The other person is a young woman with two years of college who just literally could not be bothered to get a job.

About fifteen years ago when I worked in human services, helping homeless families, people outside the industry would tell me that they were sure people moved to Massachusetts to take advantage of our "generous" welfare benefits. I would laugh at them. Nobody was moving to Massachusetts for the $448 a month they could get from welfare (the monthly benefit for a single mother with one child).

But people really do move here so I can pay for there freaking health insurance with my taxes, while I can't afford a decent plan for myself.

I do want to say that I understand why my current plan is not legal. After all, as an attorney I specialize in liability insurance issues. It's like joining a gym: everyone pays the same rate whether you end up going to the gym or not, so that the people who don't use the gym subsidize the people who do.

Serious illnesses are expensive. I have a close friend who lost a child to cancer after the child received treatments that cost the health insurer millions of dollars. The premiums of healthy people paid for that treatment. I certainly don't begrudge it. That is why the law says that I need to have expensive health insurance that hopefully my family and I will never need--until we do. But at this moment in time I just can't afford it, and frankly I feel like I paid my dues.

So that's my rant.