Dear President Obama
I am 50 years old. I was diagnosed with carcinoma in-situ 16 years ago and following my divorce 12 years ago I became self-employed. After my Cobra ran out I was able to find costly, but affordable health insurance. As a responsible individual, I have struggled to maintain my individual coverage and have increased my deductible and out of pocket-limits in an attempt to control my cost and keep my health insurance.
Last year (2009) my insurance premium was increased over 25% even though I increased my deductible and out of pocket to the highest limits available. I paid out over $6075.24 in premiums, $2415.26 for medical care, $225 in co-pays and $1500 for prescriptions. I never reached my deductible of $2500 so the insurance company only paid out a total $935.32 to my providers.
I must repeat, in 2009 my insurance company received $6075.24 in premiums and paid out only $935.32! Incredibly I have just been notified that my premium for next year 2010 has been increased over 40% to $8496.24($708.02 per month)!!!! This is the same insurance company I have been with for over 11 cancer free years!!!
I need your Health reform bill to help me!!! I simply can no longer afford to pay for my health care costs!! Thanks to this incredible premium increase demanded by my insurance company, January will be my last month of insurance.
I live in the house my mother & father built in 1958 and I am so afraid of the possibility I might loose this family heirloom as a result of my being forced to drop my health care insurance. The health insurance industry technically has not denied me insurance directly, but indirectly they have by increasing my costs. They perceive me as becoming a higher risk factor to them despite being a loyal customer. I will never be able to obtain new health insurance due to the lack of real competition.
We are talking about Anthem who apparently has no respect for your attempts to reform the health insurance industry.
Please stay focused in your reform attempts as I and many others are in desperate need of your help.
Sincerely
Natoma Canfield
For those of you who do not support the current health care bill, I have one simple question for you: what would you do?
17 comments:
Is the question "What would I do if I was Natoma Canfield?"
If I was Natoma Canfield I would check the validity of my "I will never be able to obtain new health insurance due to the lack of real competition" perception.
If that doesn't pan out then I would reassess the life choice that I made to be self-employed and determine if that's still the right choice for me.
If I still think it's right for me to be self-employed, or if I cannot find employment, then I would adjust my perspective from "I might loose [sic] this family heirloom as a result of my being forced to drop my health care insurance".
If I am still unable to begin valuing my health over my worldly possessions then I would turn to my family, local church, friends, or general well-wishers and ask if they can help me in my time of need.
If all of that fails then I would likely have a problem paying whatever medical bills arise.
I'd wait until 2014 to do anything. That's when the benefits start kicking in under the current health care bill you support.
I would vote yes to this health care bill. If this bill were law, she could choose from any insurance company, find a decent premium, and not be turned down because of her condition.
If we reduced regulations and allowed out-state insurance options, she’s have a tremendous pool of insurers from which to choose…and it wouldn’t cost a dime.
While I can sympathize with her pain, when you turn 50 your medical care needs start to increase drastically. Regardless of your past history, statistics show that at that age people simply start needing more care. That's the age at which regular screenings for various things are recommended (colonoscopies, breast cancer screenings, various heart scans, etc.). Shoulders and knees wear out, back problems manifest themselves in earnest, and obesity becomes increasingly more difficult to avoid because of metabolic changes, often causing diabetes and heart disease.
Whether Natoma's 40% increase in premiums is due to her age or the broad increases caused by so many people dropping their health coverage I can't say.
However, with regard to the remarks about her choosing to be self-employed:
One of the core tenets of American democracy is equal treatment.
Wherever you work, health care should cost the same for all Americans under similar circumstances (based on age, region, etc.). The system now is completely skewed in favor of employer-based insurance. If you don't work for a company you pay much higher premiums. That's the real problem: everyone an insurance company covers should be in the same risk pool. They shouldn't be segmenting out employees from Company A from the rest of the risk pool. Insurance companies do that because the employers are paying for it and they want special treatment.
People who buy their own insurance, or don't have any insurance, wind up paying much, much more for health care. That special treatment corporations and their employees receive should be eliminated.
That's one thing I'd change about the bill before Congress: everyone with the same basic plan should pay the same amount, regardless of where they work. And everyone should be able to get any plan an insurance company offers. Regularizing all the plans would result in cost savings for the insurance companies by simplifying their offerings and for small businesses, who pay through the teeth.
Health insurance would be a much more straight-up consumer-oriented marketplace, instead of insurance sales guys schmoozing with corporate execs and cutting backroom deals.
So help me understand. On the one hand you want to overhaul 1/5th of the economy with a monstrosity of a new healthcare entitlement to achieve “greater selection”. The program is wildly unpopular by nearly any standard and unless you believe the gov’t is really good at creating cost effective, efficient programs, it could very well bankrupt the country. On the other hand, you could achieve the same result of greater insurance selection with a little deregulation that would cost practically nothing, impinge on nobody else’s current healthcare and offend practically nobody. Why on earth would you not at least try it the simple way first?
Or is it really not just about getting a good selection of insurers?
How exactly could you achieve this result with little deregulation, dave? I think you severely are underestimating (not surprising) the power of private corporations in this country.
Take, for example, the credit card protection act. Other than allowing you and me to carry a loaded gun in a national park or on an Amtrak train, it does little to protect us from banks. It's like putting 8 fence posts up on a prairie range...the banks have already found their way around it and can still charge us insane fees.
The same is true for health care. Unless we have comprehensive reform, they insurance companies are going to figure out new and interesting ways to get around the law. As it stands right now, we don't really have any choice nor freedom.
So, what do you do if you are Natoma?
>it does little to protect us from banks.
You just aren't capable of learning, are you. So tell all of us benighted souls - what 'protection' do we need from banks? What can they do to you that isn't spelled out in a contract you have with them?
You got destroyed on this point with your gas utility company posts, as you never even came close to rebutting the points that were repeatedly made. Do you even have to wonder why the people from TSM have no respect for you?
-what 'protection' do we need from banks?-
You are fucking moron.
>You are fucking moron.
A cogent answer to the question. No you!
If this bill were law, she could choose from any insurance company, find a decent premium, and not be turned down because of her condition.
And she could ride to her doctor appointments on a shiny new unicorn.
As it stands right now, we don't really have any choice nor freedom.
Oh, do tell. How about car insurance M? How about home insurance, or life insurance? Who has you by the balls there? What is totally fucked up about health insurance is that it locks you to your employer, and in the case of Natoma, screwed her because she was never the paying customer. Even today, I would question if she has ever sought coverage from another insurer. Either she didn't and she's whining because she's too lazy to look for a better deal, or she's on some kind of assigned risk due to her cancer history. Given the potentially astronomic cost of a relapse, it doesn't seem that unreasonable that she would have to pay a higher premium than a person who has never had cancer. Or as blk notes, she is at an age when on a simple actuarial basis, her healthcare costs are going on the rise - even without considering her health history.
Let me break it down for you so you understand: I’ll hold your hand like a small child.
I live in XXX and have access to 10 insurers. You live across the border in YYY where there are also 10 insurers. If I were allowed to buy insurance in both XXX and YYY, I would now have access to 20 insurers. You still with me?
But I understand that the real world is not so simple, so let me make it a little more real-world for you.
I live in Minnesota and have access to 10 insurers. You live across the border in Wisconsin where there are also 10 insurers. If I were allowed to buy insurance in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, I would now have the “FREEDOM” to choose any of those 20 insurers. I know that freedom bit loses ya sometimes, but are you still with me?
Ever heard of Geico? How about Lending Tree? Ya still with me?
So what would I do I if were Natoma? Simple. Implore her representatives to scrap this monstrosity and immediately implement The Health Care Choice Act sponsored by Rep. Shadegg (R., AZ) and Sen. DeMint (R., S.C.).
What would I do? Maybe a little research before trotting her out as the poster child for health care reform.
http://bit.ly/bzYXJU
Time for a new thread...
Dave, the issue I have with your scenario is that all of the insurance companies would simply incorporate in one state--the one that has the least amount of regulation--and then do whatever they want.
I also think that you still haven't adequately answered the question because I don't think you have fully grasped her perspective. I think the only way you will change your mind on any of this is if you or someone close to you lives through it. You are under the false assumption that if you get sick, your insurance will cover you just fine. Read the fine print. It won't.
You will then go to the 19 other insurers who will deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition and then what? Heck, even if you are simply unhappy with your rates, the other 19 still suck in a variety of ways because they are all basically about one thing: ripping you off.
I asked this question in my post for today but I'll ask it here as well: why is it Ok if a private company raises their rate 25 percent but not OK when the government raises taxes? When these same companies all offer the same rates or worse, where is my choice? My freedom?
When these same companies all offer the same rates or worse, where is my choice? My freedom?
You don't have to buy one fucking thing from ANY corporation. You don't have that luxury with your taxes.
Surely you knew that.
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