I've just received a letter from my company. The letter says that in order for the company to protect the benefits it provides employees/retirees, the Blue Care Network plan for retirees (me) is hereby discontinued and we'll will be enrolled in a special BlueCross BlueShield plan created just for retirees. 600 dollar deductible, (0 now) 6000 co pay (0 now) and 80/20 (full coverage now) for the rest of the claim. It won't cover some things we get now. So it's a crappy plan in place of a reasonable one. They haven't told us the cost yet, but since it includes only retirees, our rates will probably double. We pay 256.00 a month now.
I'm so pissed I could chew nails. FFFFFFFFFing Democrats!
This is one of the few things I agree with that the Health Care plan SHOULD do. Make the cost of health care be at least PARTIALLY born by the insured.
Health Care should not be "free." As you can see, it becomes insanely expensive and accountability for the fee schedules moves to 2nd/3rd/4th parties when the actual consumer and the actual health care provider are BOTH removed from the demand for payment and the rendering of payment processes.
All that happens, is the 2nd/3rd/4th parties take a slice as they continue to spiral the costs out of control.
Same thing happened with the real estate market. People started taking extra mortgages out when the home values artificially inflated, and buying second homes or upgrading to larger homes. The realtor costs and closing fees were "hidden" in the refinancing structures and inflated home values.
Result? The realtors and mortgage broker institutions walked away with all the fees involved, the cost of the realtor/broker fees was bundled into the artificially inflated loan, the borrower took a ding on their credit during a repo, and the bank took it on the chin.
The realtors and mortgage brokers are equivalent to the 2nd/3rd/4th parties that are gnawing on health care right now.
Watch for the same thing to happen to college education, soon. There's no accountability in the lending process, and a LOT of the mortgage broker institutions are re-gearing to the education market (i.e. the flash ads on your hotmail/yahoo mail login, telling you "Obama wants single moms to go back to school!"). In 5-10 years, we'll be hearing about a rash of education loan defaults. Sallie Mae will be the next Fannie Mae / Freddy Mac. Stafford loans will be the next equivalent to FHA bailouts.
If health care is ever truly reformed to a functional system, several things will happen:
-A lot of IT people will be laid off (pre-authorizing appointment insurance is the latest "cool thing" for medical offices to do... the software interfaces from your Dr's office to a central broker house are very expensive...but so is having a patient show up with false insurance paperwork)
-A lot of medical billers will be laid off (how many radio ads and web banners have you seen for "work at home! Do medical billing in your spare time! Set your own hours!"?)
-The patient will pay (at least part) of the fees for the visit up-front. Not a co-pay, but they will know the actual cost for the service rendered and make a conscious decision to consume or not.
-The patient will then NOT consume medicine when the cause is trivial, reducing the demand in the marketplace since insurance creates false demand (it doesn't cost me anything except my time, so I might as well check it out "just in case.")