Health Care Debate
May 7, 2014 (WABC) -- "It's run a little like a brothel - you pay way more than it's worth."
The surprise to me wasn't the statement it could apply to so many things in our society of course. The surprise was who said it. It was my doctor, and she was talking about health insurance companies. Today on Facebook, after I was forced to do some math about my current state of health care coverage, I let it fly. I blasted the current state of health insurers unleashed and unabashedly raising rates and changing the game. It all started with a procedure routine by a long-time doctor of mine who is slapped with the label that is the bane of everyone's bank account: Out of network.
Her fee for the procedure it was made famous by Katie Couric, and we thank her for that! was 6 times what the insurance company deems "acceptable." So at this rate, I will never ever meet my out of network deductible. (Unless, bite my tongue, something really bad happens.) And so I did the math, and between my deductibles for in network and out, plus my doubling of premiums, I could afford to buy a new car with the money I'm spending on health insurance this year.
And I opined that it would be far far far far far cheaper to pay for my own health care and pay a fine for not having health insurance under the Obamacare reform, than to pay for my premiums and deductible. All this, again, assuming nothing bad happens just routine medical stuff. That is a risky assumption I know.
And then the discussion on Facebook by lots of folks turned to how to change all that. One of the problems is that President Obama was worried that he couldn't get his reforms passed if the government entered the market as a "single payer" which would have forced the health insurance companies to not price gouge a public that is now required to buy insurance. What a sweet deal for them!
Thank you all of you on all sides of this issue, for weighing in. Having everyone covered by health insurance is supposed to save us money, because those millions without insurance before used emergency rooms as their basic health care, and that cost all of us big time.
Hopefully, the health care reform that has rolled in will be re-tooled and the problems that so many people seem to have will eventually be smoothed out.
So that's my personal back-beat as we prep tonight's 11 p.m. newscast.
We'll have any breaking news of the night, plus Meteorologist Lee Goldberg's AccuWeather forecast, and Rob Powers with the night's sports. I hope you can join Sade Baderinwa and me, tonight at 11.
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