Reform of Existing Health Insurance Laws
Even if a public health care option is not passed into law, there is ample argument for strong reform of the laws covering private insurance. All of us can think of someone who, while well employed or retired with private coverage, has found themselves shut out by their insurance companies, coverage terminated simply because their insurer determined the person was no longer profitable. This, after the person has paid all premiums and met all other contractual obligations.
Here are some anecdotes from people I know:
- A retired elderly couple with a good private insurance plan: The wife developed a debilitating, and ultimately fatal, degenerative spinal disease. She was required to spend months in the hospital while suffering intense pain. Her insurance company canceled her coverage when she reached the 90 day maximum for days spent hospitalized. Her husband couldn’t conscientiously take her out of the hospital. She needed constant care and medication. He ended up paying for her hospitalization out of his own pocket until she passed away, and he was nearly bankrupt when she did pass away.
He was going to be faced, if she had kept on living, with a horrible decision about how to take care of his wife when his savings ran out. The insurance company insisted on dropping hospital coverage after ninety days, when everyone knows that the very purpose of insurance is to cover the unpredictability of ill health over any given period of time, not an arbitrarily determined ninety days.
- I have a friend who works for a government defense contractor. She has a good administrative position, and a middle class salary. The contracting company is British. It has a contract with the US Government in the DC area. The company offers her an insurance plan, but it is unaffordable. The monthly premiums are too high for her to insure herself and her children, and still buy food and pay her rent. She’s single, her ex-husband cannot contribute. She earns too much to get state coverage for her children, and too little to afford the plan offered by her employer. They have no choice but to go without any insurance whatsoever.
This strikes me as very nearly criminal hypocrisy by this British contractor. The company is run from the UK, a country which DOES have public health insurance, where all of its UK employees automatically covered in some form or another. It comes over here to exploit a lucrative US Government contract, and profits from the the fact that it is not obligated to provide an affordable plan to the US citizens it employs.
The US Government is just as guilty here. It has outsourced work that should be done by government employees to a foreign company that refuses to provide American citizens benefits equivalent to those they would receive, were they directly employed by the US Government.
Sadly, in the U.S., being privately insured, or being a full-time employee, is still no guarantee of trouble-free insurance. This is plain and simple thievery on the part of the insurance companies. I don’t want to lower the bar on what I want from health care reform, but without a doubt, reforming the laws that govern private insurance would go a very long way all by itself.
If you a have story about an experience with private insurance that you think illustrates what is wrong with healthcare in the US today, tell us about it in the comments.
