insurance « Robin Writes

Well, while all this remodeling has just been a barrel of laughs, a super fun activity and all that, this week’s post is brought to you by Paperwork.

Sigh.

It’s not bad enough that January 1st brings the beginning of the month, which means a few hours doing royalty statements for RHP, but it also brings the beginning of the year or rather, in my case, the END of the year.

And that means accounting, personal and business, and taxes, and this year the FAFSA, and a health insurance issue—see last week—and de-decorating the house from Christmas.

Sigh.

So my husband is down at the farm, batching it and eating crap, but most importantly, he’s tiling the office and bedroom and finishing the last bedroom wall.

And that’s a big HALLELUJAH, but it also means that very soon I can start dragging some furniture down there so I can move down the boxes I’ve packed that are starting to fill up the garage again.

And the living room.

Yes, got a bit ahead of myself.

But really, I saw no point in putting non-holiday stuff back up on the mantel, etc., when I’d just have to take it down again. Besides, it’s almost time to put the house on the market and we’ve got a few minor repairs and things to do here.

Much easier without the clutter.

So, no pics, no exciting stories of my sorta/kinda ineptitude with paint and so forth, but just know that I’m thinking about all that endless tile while I sit here, buried in paperwork . . .

Yeah, yeah. New year, new me, blah, blah, blah.

New me who is apparently not going to have health insurance.

Let’s talk about that.

The very definition of insurance is protection from catastrophe. Back in the old days, if you had health insurance, it was in case you ended up in the hospital for surgery or had a heart attack or whatever. If you went to see a doc, you paid him. Period.

Now, of course, the almighty government, in collusion with insurance companies, has decided that you MUST HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE or you will have no health care.

That is bullshit.

Health CARE is not the same thing. ACCESS to health care is NOT the same thing.

Anyone in the US can call up a doc and make an appointment; or go to the ER; or go to a clinic. ANYONE. Sure, in rare instances, there are no docs, and sometimes even your regular doc will not have an opening for weeks, at which time your illness will have resolved or you’ll be dead.

So.

I don’t mind paying, say, $100 a month “just in case” and maybe $50 to see a doctor. Not at all. Heck, even ramp that up to $75 for a specialist. Docs schedule something like 8-10 patients per hour, and that comes to $500 per hour, using that $50 as a basis.

But wait, you say, they have expenses too—student loans, office rent, equipment, employees, malpractice insurance. There’s that word again . . .

Yes they do. They have a business, just like many people. Let’s take an 8-hour day: $4500 income per day, at 50 weeks out of the year, equals well over one million dollars.

All that aside, because I don’t begrudge anyone making money, quite a few of those employees are present for the sole purpose of dealing with billing and INSURANCE stuff! And the other side of this is, again, that word: insurance for malpractice.

Basically, they’re raking it in and paying it right back out. I’m not blaming doctors.

I’m blaming the insurance scam.

They scare you. They jack up prices. Case in point, my blood pressure medicine is Inderal. It’s been around for decades, as has its generic. It was $4 a month, and this fall it zoomed up to $100 a month.

There is not one single thing you can say to me about research and development driving costs. For DECADES this drug has been on the market.

If the government wanted to actually help, they’d put a cap on drug costs.

If the government wanted to actually help with healthcare, they’d make sure everyone could get an appointment at a reasonable cost per visit.

I’m going to stop now. I feel my blood pressure rising, and since the only way to have even sorta/kinda affordable meds, I’m going to have to pay over $900 per month for so-called insurance instead of the $22 I’ve been paying over the last couple years.

When I use even three visits per year, and three lab tests, paying out-of-pocket would cost me around $75 a month.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. President.