Health care costs rising beyond reach
I learned the hard way how broken our health care system is. Let me just say that 2009 was not my best year for health care. From the end of March to the middle of April, I had the extreme pleasure of making three trips to the hospital resulting in 2 surgical procedures. A third surgery followed in mid Summer. Before this banner year, I had never thought much about my health insurance. I knew my medical and prescription coverage had been steadily decreasing over the past few years, but I had no idea how quickly it would go from insurance to something that was no better than a grocery store discount card. Every trip to the pharmacy resulted in a new, higher price for the same medications I had been taking for years.
The new prescriptions that I was given were covered, but were at a special, new, “4th Tier” price. In addition, my plan now had an annual cap of $500/ person, $1000/ family. This was a change from the year before that I did not know about because I just let my coverage continue from the previous year. The worst part about the new cap was that when my portion ran out I could not use my wife\’s relatively untouched portion. To make mine disappear all the quicker, the prescriptions were all charged at different rates. One medicine was applied to the cap at the co-payment rate, while another was applied at the full, uninsured price. Also, several of my prescriptions were bumped into the highest price point (remember that magical 4th Tier). This means, although it is covered, the price to me would be $700 for the first month, $500 for the next month and finally $475 after my insurance cap was reached. So much for having a prescription plan. It is only good for the first 3 months of the year. The prescriptions were only one part of it. In addition to paying more for the meds that my doctors gave me to make me well, I had to tell them that after all of their work in diagnosing and treating me, that I could not follow their directions because my insurance company did not cover those medications or treatments.
To add a nice little bit of topping to the garbage sundae that I was served, I received 3 bills from 3 different anesthesiologists saying that my health plan did not cover their services because they were out of network. Apparently, upon being wheeled into emergency surgery, you must be lucid enough to get every health care worker who is servicing you to tell you if they are one of your \”network providers\”. If not, well I guess you call for a reliever from the OR bullpen? I could go on, but I believe I made my point. I cannot believe that I am the only one who is having these issues. It is not as if I had some cut rate insurance plan either. This was my United Health care group plan at work. It is the same plan as the previous year, only with some new reverse perks. If this is the future of health care, this may be one of the last things you hear from me before the costs get so great I just quit my meds and hope exercise buys me some bonus time. We need a change; we need to catch up to the rest of the world.
Brian
