puppetmaker | A Personal Rant about Health Insurance

Which I am going to put behind a cut so those who do not wish to read it may pass it by.

Edit: Before you read this just know that I am not dying or dead. I will be fine. I have scared a couple of people this morning and I didn't want to do that so I am adding this before you read the rest of it.

Right now I have a condition that there use to be an easy, all be it pricey, way to correct the condition with few if any side effects. But now the insurance companies are making me prove that the condition exists and is at a point where this procedure is the way to go for my health. So I have to get a series of blood tests to prove that the procedure that the Doctor thinks is how it is going to go is called for. However if my condition worsens and I have to go to the Emergency Room, then the insurance company will cover the cost of the procedure since at that point it is considered life threatening.

Now to my mind having my Doctor take care of it probably costs less than the trip to the Emergency Room along with the possible complications that are being created because I have to prove that my body is doing what the Doctor already knows is happening to me. That is not right. One would think that a Doctor knows what the patient needs and should be able to prescribe. They talk about the death boards and all the rest not realizing that these already exist at the insurance company that automatically says no until forced to say yes.

I also found out recently some rather bad health news about one of my best friends on this planet. We may not communicate regularly but when we get back together it is like slipping on a comfortable set of shoes and just picking up where we left off. I have been friends with him for over 20 years now.

I recently found out that he has a couple of things that are just compounding problems for him. And part of this comes out of health insurance not allowing for procedures that might have stemmed the damage that is now being done to his body. Part of it is him ignoring a problem figuring it would go away but scared to go to the Doctor because he didn’t have health insurance and really no means to pay for treatment. Now that he does have health insurance, they are double checking and interfering with treatments that he does need by this point. Even if he makes it through this, he will have serious complications for the rest of his life.

Now I honestly don’t know if I am going to have a friend to see when I go back to Atlanta later this year. And I am scared and angry at a system that is so stingy for some and pays for tummy tucks and nose jobs for others. And all those people who are shouting that they don’t want government in their health care who are on Medicaid. What the frack do they think Medicaid come from? The Medicaid Fairy?

We do need health care reform in the US. We need it bad. The insurance companies are deciding who lives and who dies and who they don’t want to deal with because they are “a bad gamble”. They are making money off the health and forcing the sick onto the government rolls so they don’t have to let go of the dollars that they have collected over the years when these people were healthy. Drug companies aren’t much better. But say the word regulation or oversite and they pull out the big lobbying guns and come up with phrases like “death panels” to scare the American people to stay with the status quo.

And that makes me just so angry. It has for years but probably more so right now since there are solutions to both my problem and my friend’s problem that our respective Doctors can’t apply because we have to prove ourselves “worthy” of the health care we need.

I am grateful for having health insurance even with all the strings attached considering what I would have had to pay without it. (and the cost of health insurance is a whole other rant on its own)