A List and a Phone Number

Thanks to everybody who posted comments about health coverage. We’ll definitely be looking into many of the options that you brought up. For those of you worse off, I can’t tell you how sorry I am and you are definitely worth posting about, even for the people who sound like my mother.

I think some points of clarification are in order.

  1. We have insurance. We are covered. Including Leta. This is retroactive to the first of this month.
  2. Chuck is not insured.
  3. It is expensive. We still have a few other options that are yet to be explored, but I felt it important to get even expensive coverage, because in between pimping my dog and playing on the computer all day, I actually care about the well-being of my family.
  4. I posted about being denied hoping to get some suggestions about how to save money and still be covered. Ironically, one of the companies who denied us is participating in advertising with a company that rhymes with schmoogle.
  5. I did not and do not ask for any of you to pay for my insurance or my health care. If you feel that way I have no response. I left my day job fully aware that I had excellent benefits. This was one of the reasons it took me so long to leave.
  6. I expected to have a conversation about the sorry state of insurance coverage and health care. If you live in the United States and work, you pay into several federallly funded health care and social programs. Recipients of those programs would love to talk to you. I pay into those same programs. Sorry for the buzz kill.
  7. COBRA would have been $1,100/month (part of the excellent benefits). We chose a state plan. We could not immediately get the state plan without first being denied insurance. We had to apply for individual coverage and be denied before that option was open to us.
  8. I’m taking responsibility for my decisions. Looking at the comments, I think a lot more working people are in the same boat than not. All the platitudes and attacks in the world won’t change this. I believe that change will occur if we educate ourselves and express ourselves. If you don’t hold the majority opinion in a comments thread and feel the need to react because you are feeling vulnerable, I suggest either closing your browser window and/or turning down the Jesus.
  9. Health care around the world is jacked. Some countries do a better job than others.
  10. I don’t live in one of them.
  11. Based solely on the comments of the previous two blurbs, Australia sounds like they have a good universal health situation.
  12. Ad hominem attacks towards me and complaining about this site in a comments thread is nothing short of making my day. So is your passive aggressiveness. LOVE IT! Blow me away with your powerful logic! Tell me I suck even more! Way to convince me that my opinion is wrong! Make me the bad guy!
  13. I did not make any insurance laws in the United States.

I’m going to take a page from GEORGE!:
Complaints? I’ve used the proceeds from the Chuck calendar to staff a call line: 1-800-EAT-SHIT.

Newer Comments →
  • Saj

    I don’t know. I think all discussions can have two sides. Is that an attack? Am I being passive aggressive?

    Anyway, happy you found insurance.

  • http://www.myspace.com/plotagainstrachel Rachel

    Yes! A lot of working people are in the same boat. Everyone (including and especially the US Government) is spending more and getting less coverage for their money. The market is not free or fair. I was denied 75% of the “promised” coverage for a normal widsom teeth procedure, and ended up having to pay 500% of my expected contribution. And I supposedly have “excellent benefits” – I worked for a Fortune 100 company. I totally agree with you on all counts. The arguments against universal health coverage (on it’s face) are baseless. Dammit.

  • http://www.patatomic.com patatomic

    Jon.

    I won’t share my dramatic/pissed-off insurance story here for the masses, but suffice it to say that I understand your pain to a degree and feel that there has to be a better way.

    Let me know where, when and how the ass-kickin’ will begin. I’m totally there, dude.

    Vive la Causa!

  • BT

    Actually, I really appreciated your posting, because I’m a freelancer covered under my husband, who has had serious health issues that would deny him coverage should he go elsewhere. Your experience was instructive, and I’m thankful that you shared it. Please keep us updated on future events.

  • http://none julie

    I thought both posts were interesting and well thought out. I think what you are doing is great and takes a lot of guts. This is a huge issue and I liked the idea one of the suggestions to start a bloggers association. I don’t always read through all of your comments for lack of time. I am tempted to go back and try to find the ones that were so negative just so I can gape in amazement. I know it is easy (for some) to misinterpret the tone in email or writing but to think you were asking them to pay for your insurance??? Perhaps a tool that allows you to write with inflection might make all the differnce to those so dense.

  • merewhit

    I just saw a commercial here in Texas for the new Medicare program starting in 2006. One of the grocery stores around here is starting a supplemental prescription program as an add-on to the new Medicare 2006. I thought this interesting and revalent to your previous post as to why Costco or Sams Club couldn’t do the same thing with healthcare. If a grocery store can help out senior citizens with prescription coverage, why can’t Target or Wal-Mart help out their customers with some sort of basic health insurance coverage. Hmmmm….
    http://www.heb.com/yourHEBStore/SD-pharmacy-cardIntro.jsp

  • Flibbity

    Hey, I’ve never posted before but have been reading both you and dooce for a while now. Just wanted to say more power to you for all the stuff you’ve done and have been working on. I’m getting married next year and both my fiance and I work full time jobs. In addition he runs a small online business on the side, sort of as a hobby. It makes money, but not nearly enough for us to live off of. We spend HOURS at a time trying to figure out ways to make it lucrative enough that we could quit our full time jobs and focus on that so that when we start to have kids we too can be work at home moms and dads. That’s the main reason we’d do something like that, because we’d want as much time as possible with the kids. One of the things we often contemplate is how we’d handle health insurance. We’ve only looked into the matter casually a few times since we’re so far from putting any of this into motion yet but what we’ve learned from those casual encounters has definitely disillusioned us to no end. I can’t believe some of the shit people say in this comments section, I have to believe some of them are just jealous that you had the cojones to do what you really wanted to and what was best for you and your family, even if it was scary and risky. So kick ass and carry on, you’re an inspiration to two kids on the east coast if nobody else!

  • http://aredeaf.blogspot.com Coelecanth

    Holy comment insanity!

    My favorite thing about blog comments is how some people assume that they’ve got the blogger’s life all figured out. Despite the incredibly limited information they’ve been given.

    I choose to believe, in the absence of information to contrary, that you’re always doing your very best for your family. Doesn’t really matter to me if I’m right about that, it’s a purely self serving strategy. Helps limit my ranting to unheard invective monologues directed at motorists who insist on trying to kill me on my morning commute.

    All the best to the Blurbodoocery.

  • Jamie

    I’m not sure what companies you have tried, but my husband & I have insurence through BCBS of DE, and its by far one of the best policies I’ve come across. Its an EPO policy (Total, only in newtwork coverage, unless emergency). Of course if you have already tried this company and been denied, disreguard this comment. Hope you can get everything figured out soon. Good health coverage is so hard to come by. Merry Christmas!

  • http://madmitch.blogspot.com Mitch

    I just thought of something that I don’t think has yet been considered, maybe it has and I just missed it among the many comments. I haven’t asked her yet but I’ll bet Rebeca and I would be able to adopt you and you could take advantage of the health care system in Canada. It’s not perfect but it’s still pretty good. Of course you would have to spend a few months of every year in Ottawa but then you could always come up in the summer (it’s really quite nice here in summer!). I wouldn’t even make you call me Dad. ;)

  • Heather

    Attackers: I don’t see Jon as having a pity party here. I think (correct me if I’m wrong, Jon) that he is merely trying to point out what a flawed system we have, and how those on the more unfortunate end of things have it even worse – to the point of life or death. Luckily, they are not in this position. Nevertheless, his choice to resign from his job and obtain insurance for his family on his own has exposed our country’s insurance farce to him (and many commenters) in a much brighter light than ever before.

    As far as insurance companies being businesses, I agree – absolutely. However, the fact that someone paying cash pays more than an insurance company does for the same service is a boot up the ass to those who decide to give it a go on their own.

  • rjs

    Reading your post today, I had to go back to yesterday’s to find those negative comments. I am not American, and do not live in the States, and I have to say that I find the rhetoric of some Americans (many Americans) totally incomprehensible and illogical. Your negative commenters berated you for leaving your job, thereby putting yourself in the situation you now find yourself in. Why should they pay for your choices, they say. Well, they should because America (ironically) prides itself on being all about freedom. What freedom is there if you can’t quit a job to pursue your own dreams without sacrificing access to health care — a basic human right? Isn’t that kind of freedom really just an illusion? What kind of freedom do you possess if your choice is to continue in a job you hate, or quit to try better your life and risk not being able to access care in the event you become ill? It’s Hobson’s choice.

  • http://mybigredheart.blogspot.com zetta

    Some people are real assholes on other people’s blogs. Ahem.

  • anon

    But there is healthcare in the US, just not the kind Jon wants. If you go to any hospital in the US, you can pay for any service you want. If you don’t have money, you will still be served. We also have Medicare and other options for the poor and elderly.

    Or you can pay for your own insurance. My insurance runs about $850 a month for just the two of us. We could boost taxes to closer to 50% and cover everyone, altho we’d probably do that poorly. By paying for it yourself, instead of paying the govt to pay for it for you, you do have some choice.

    It’s mostly about malpractice which drives medical costs which drive insurance rates. The thing is, 5 years ago, Jon would be looking at a bill that was half of what it is today

  • http://www.spamboy.com/ Spamboy

    I dialed 1-800-EAT-SHIT and I reached a “David” who had a cunningly-disguised “accent.”

  • Z

    “By paying for yourself you do have some choice…”

    I was self-employed and doing reasonably well – but not quite able yet to afford health insurance. I did pay my own medical expenses. As a diabetic heart patient, I made some interesting medical decisions but I felt it was worth it. I was NOT insurable under regular self-pay plans but I would have qualified (probably) under the state plan when I could afford it.

    One morning, I fell. Just slipped on the ice. My first month of hospitalization was over $120,000. I was hospitalized a total of three months and in a nursing home for an additional three months. I lost my business, my home, and just about everything else I owned. Yes, Medicaid did eventually step in and the hospitals and doctors wrote off a great deal. I’m still in crushing debt from this.

    Healthcare, insurance, medications, self-pay, HMOs, malpractice, etc are all out of control in my opinion. It’s insane out there when doctors are having trouble paying back student loans – or are leaving practice because they can’t make malpractice insurance anymore. When HMOs dictate medications based on cost instead of efficacy. When your average middle-income family can no longer afford insurance. When the elderly are buying prescriptions from Canada because they can’t get their medications AND afford to eat.

    The system needs serious overhauling and to pretend otherwise is grossly ignorant.

    In my opinion, of course.

  • http://hibiscusfire.blogspot.com hibiscusfire

    Australia has better weather than Canada, too! (Sorry, Canadians, some of us need sunlight to be able get out of bed everyday.)

    But if I had to pay $2000 each time I wanted to watch a movie with my mom or celebrate a birthday/wedding/birth with one of my friends, it would get a little hard.

    So for now, I’m just going to annoy Bill O’Reilly fans by trying to turn this country into a more communist/socialist/bleeding-heart-liberal/pro-lazy-good-for-nothing-poor-looting-people/anti-honest-wage-earning-billionair-CEO/tax-wasting system like they have in Canada/Australia/Sweden/Japan/Uk and other evil-liberal-axis-countries.

    Sorry, Blurb, for over-posting my share, here. Thanks for getting the conversation going and best of luck trying to actually live the American Dream.

  • Serafina

    This makes me feel lucky i live in Australia.

  • http://jonniker.blogspot.com Jonna

    Oh dude, sorry people went off on you. I thought your rant was completely valid, not that it’s all about ME in any way.

    Separately, I’ve been going to the doctor for anxiety (which is WICKED, as I will demonstrate). Your rant freaked me out to the point of not wanting to ever go back to the doctor again for this condition for fear of being denied health coverage later on when Husband starts his own business. Eeeeeeek.

    I think we’re fucked anyway, given that he’s got ulcerative colitis and I have Hashimoto’s. Toast, I tell you!

    So sorry to hear of all of this. I agree, it’s fucked up.

  • Tee

    Right now, we Australians got to feel lucky about something, I guess.

    Pity having a good healthcare system doesn’t get rid of hatred, bigotry and racism.

  • http://mainelymadge.typepad.com madge

    I’m always amazed at how vitriolic commenters get over here. But, to attack Jon directly? That’s ricockulous. People, just go elsewhere if something infuriates you so much. Or, as Heather says, “Step away from the computer.”

    Regarding the whole fucked up insurance nightmare in this country, I can’t resist offering my lovely experience: My husband was in an accident two years ago. We were covered very well because 1. He was injured on a city/state-run jobsite. 2. He was in a union. 3. He is a United States Citizen. If any of the three of those had not been true, do you want to take a guess at what our hospital bill would have been?

    $275,000. More than a quarter of a million dollars for three weeks, four surgeries and one bacterial infection, on the house. Now, that’s a healthcare system. Oh, and from now until he dies, he has to pay for every single medical issue, because he is and always will be UNINSURABLE. Nice.

  • http://www.unitedforpeace.org jessica

    Hmm…I think I’d like to suggesta nomination for the U.S. health-insurance industry for Blurbomat Whore. We were so busy talking about the industry that I forgot mention it earlier.

    I’m not going back to read the negative posts, I think you summarized your position with your 10 point list. Glad to hear that you’ve got some coverage right now, even if it’s costing an arm-and-leg. Hope you manage to find something more reasonable ASAP.

    I will, however, address this post by ‘anon’:
    “But there is healthcare in the US, just not the kind Jon wants. If you go to any hospital in the US, you can pay for any service you want. If you don’t have money, you will still be served. We also have Medicare and other options for the poor and elderly.

    Or you can pay for your own insurance. My insurance runs about $850 a month for just the two of us. We could boost taxes to closer to 50% and cover everyone, altho we’d probably do that poorly. By paying for it yourself, instead of paying the govt to pay for it for you, you do have some choice.

    It’s mostly about malpractice which drives medical costs which drive insurance rates. The thing is, 5 years ago, Jon would be looking at a bill that was half of what it is today”

    1. Malpractice insurance is one factor that drives insurance rates up, sure. The rapid rise in premiums over the last decade is due to many other factors as well. I don’t think that malpractice reform or limits is the answer to our health-care crisis…it’s just a partial answer.

    Others: HMOs are competing with each other to get doctors to sign onto their networks, which means they have to offer higher payouts to doctors, which drives up costs to consumers. Technology changes rapidly, and hospitals have to constantly upgrade their technology and train their staff, plus they have to maintain their infrastructure, pay admin and nursing salaries, etc. They pass those costs along when they bill for their services, and insurance companies pass those along to the consumer.

    2. What your choices list doesn’t really take into consideration is that many Americans fall into the category of ‘working poor,’ especially those who are self-employed or in entry level positions. They make too much money to qualify for Medicaid or state-insurance programs, and not enough money to be able to afford an individual policy premium and still pay for the essentials. These are the people who make up the majority of the uninsured.

    3. The fact that you can go into any hospital and pay for any service you want is true, but totally impractical for all but the most standard procedures. Sure, you may be able to cover your annual physical and related tests, but when something happens that requires hospitalization, out-patient surgery or high-tech diagnostics, costs quickly balloon out of control.

    4. If you don’t have money you will still be served, which will address the immediate need for care, but will not cover the expense, which will probably be staggering.

    People whose salaries are high-income are covered in one of three ways:
    1. great benefits with their employer
    2. they can afford their own policy, even if it’s a high-risk policy
    3. they can shoulder the out of pocket expenses, no matter what (for the most part, this category would likely be super-rich)

    People who are unemployed or very low-income or are senior citizens typically are covered because they:
    1. Qualify for Medicaid/Medicare
    2. Qualify for state subsidized care

    I live in New York City. As a single person, in order to qualify for a subsidized plan, I have to make less than $21,000/year, gross. That is not a living wage in this city.

    3. People who fall between these extremes are vulnerable. Some get insurance through work, some don’t. Some can stretch and afford their premiums, some can’t. Chances are that if they can’t afford the premiums, they probably aren’t going to be able to afford a catastrophe, and are going to head straight to a medical expense bankruptcy.

    Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s right.

  • eco2geek

    We all know about the nice-sounding “If you don’t have money, you will still be served” business. What “anon” doesn’t say is that 1) the hospital will still make every effort it can to collect from you, up to and including seizing any assets you have; and 2) the hospital will only serve you if you have a life-threatening need, which means no preventative care, which means that you’re worse off (since you get sicker than you would otherwise be) and the hospital’s worse off (since the treatment will probably cost more than it otherwise would).

    And, although “anon” writes the nice-sounding phrase, “We also have Medicare and other options for the poor and elderly,” s/he neglects to mention that Congress is trying very hard to cut back on funding for these programs, in order to pay for the Iraq war while making Bush’s tax cuts permanent.

  • Ginger

    I had no idea how lucky I was until I read your posts on health insurance and the subsequent comments earlier this morning. I’m Australian, self-employed as a sole trader (a registered business, not a registered company) and because I earn over $85,000 a year, I’m in the highest tax bracket, which is about 42% – 48% (which I’ve bitched and moaned about plenty of times). Taking into account my business expense deductibles, I probably pay around 35% in taxes. However, 1.5% of those taxes goes towards Medicare and covers me if I go to a GP who bulk-bills or a public hospital in case of emergency (which I had to do recently, on a Sunday, when my private practice wasn’t open). I never saw a bill. I also pay $89.00 p/mth for private insurance, which covers me and rebates me between 30% – 70% for just about everything; dental, optical, physio, chiro. Ambulance and hospital are 100% covered. About the only things I miss out on are hip replacements and pacemakers. At 33yo, I’m not too worried about those… just yet.

    I can’t believe the poor sod who ended up $45K out of pocket for a broken leg. That just wouldn’t happen here. I can’t believe you and Heather and Leta have been rejected based on conditions that no longer exist. That just wouldn’t happen here. Australia really is the lucky country and I second what Mena said: I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

    The magnitude of the problem seems so overwhelming to me as an outsider. I hope in the short-term you and the family find a solution to your particular problem. In the long-term, I sincerely hope to see major change to the US health care system that benefits every US citizen.

    Ginger

    PS – As for the sad bitch who had a go at you for “playing on your computer all day”…. HAHAHAHA! is all I can say to that.

    Jon (and Heather) probably have about a half-dozen full time jobs each, right there at home. When you work for yourself, you don’t have time to “play on the computer all day”. You’re too busy being the product/service provider, the marketing manager, the accountant, the receptionist, the cleaner, the file clerk, not to mention the 497 other tasks you do to squeeze blood from a stone (get money coming in). Let’s face it, if people didn’t leave their soul-destroying (yet secure) jobs to start something of their own, how could any economy continue to grow and provide jobs for the up-and-coming workforce?

    Let’s not even mention being a parent at home full-time. That’s a full-time (and a half!) job you never have the luxury of walking away from.

  • danioz

    Good summary.

    As an australian though it is worth to point out that a regualar income earner (over 70,000 AUD – which is about $55,000 US) here pays 40% tax (incremental but still) as well as a 1.5% Medicare levy. Not free. But a hell of a lot better than the US system. I also choose to pay $60 a month for private health insurance – to cover private hospital, dental, optical, physio etc.
    Good luck for you and Heather, I love the calendar, keep on pimping.

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