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We Thought We Were FreeDecember 30, 2005 Today an editor colleague wrote that she'd just been notified that her insurance plan had been discontinued and that as of April 2006 she would have to pay $1,400 a month for the coverage she'd been getting for $930. Takes me right back. Almost exactly five years ago I was notified that Conglomerate A had bought out Conglomerate B and that as a result my monthly premium for my (useless except in case of disaster) major medical insurance would increase from $272 to $643 on the first of the year. How long does a frog stay in a pot of water whose temperature is steadily increasing? Damned if I know. That increase was out of the question: I jumped. In 2004 my retina detached, and after being reattached it detached again. Two eye surgeries, paid for out of pocket. Or, more precisely, out of plastic. Today, no joke, I wrote the check that got my credit card balance down to zero for the first time since detachment #1. The actual cost of the surgeries was probably paid by May or June, but given other expenses and all those sluggish-cash-flow months where I couldn't pay more than $200 -- well, I'm not quite ready to tally up the finance charges. I have, however, done the math. What I shelled out for the eye surgeries was about 20 percent of what I would have paid in insurance premiums during the previous 42-odd months. Over the years I have often bitched about my alcoholic mother and my financially clueless father, but I'm here to tell you: I'm grateful to both of them for their excellent genes. My mother's mother lived to within a week of her 105th birthday, and her sisters all lived into their nineties. My father's mother was still horseback riding at 80; then she had a stroke and died 10 days later. My father is now 83; my mother died at 73, despite decades of trying to smoke and drink and depress herself to death. Eye surgery #1 was my first surgical encounter since I was one month old -- I only know this because my mother told me about it; it was to have a large birthmark removed. I did get my mother's eyes and my father's teeth -- they both suck -- but my general health is excellent. I go to the optometrist and the dentist regularly (pay as you go), but I haven't had a checkup since I was 26, and that was a perfunctory pre-employment exam. Did I say that I'm now 54? My editor colleague is less fortunate than I. She has pre-existing conditions, and she has a family; her husband and one of her sons require medication for ADHD, and her son also for depression. At least she has the option of buying insurance through her husband's employer. If I'd known then what I know now -- if I'd had the courage then that I have now -- I would have stopped paying insurance premiums a long time ago. Now I think about those premiums differently. I think: What would I have to do without in order to shovel big chunks of my income into the maw of some insurance company? My horse, for one thing. Personally I think my horse does more for my health, mental and physical, than any insurance company I've ever paid bribes to; your mileage may vary. My writing, for another. Would I have been able to finish novel #1 and be trying to write novel #2 had I been tithing $643 a month to some insurance company? Doubt it. Freedom. Think about it. We in the U.S. of A. tend to think that if no law forbids us it, then we are free to do it. Beg to differ. If you decline to speak out because you're afraid you'll get fired if you do, how different is that from being afraid to speak out because you'll be thrown in jail if you do? If you hate your job, or if it bores you to tears, why don't you quit? Because of the benefits -- the health insurance? How free are you? The defense rests. What if, what if? I have this idea. You know how our elected representatives are supposed to represent our interests? How can they represent our interests if they don't know what our lives are like? They've all got nifty health insurance coverage; how can they possibly know what the rest of us are up against? What say that every year we have a lottery. What say that every year some government agency tells us what percentage of the U.S. population is uninsured, and what percentage underinsured. That percentage of the U.S. Congress will be uninsured, and that percentage of the U.S. Congress will be underinsured. And the individual congresscritters will be chosen by lot. How long before the entire country is covered by a single-payer health plan? How long, how long?
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