Bias Part 2
Ok, so it struck me that this has some application to the whole health care debate going on in our country right now. The issue has a whole spectrum of folks' opinions, but they range from one end, in which people basically see themselves as the authors of their own success, despite the health care system we have in place, to those who see themselves as helpless victims of an uncaring society.
Most of us, at one time or another in life, will encounter some major health challenge personally or through our family members. My own experience with this starts with my bout of cancer. For those of you who weren't around, the particular form of cancer I had is generally deadly, and I haven't run across too many accounts of people besides myself surviving it.
I was too young to know a whole lot of the details of how things were handled financially, but my parents carried health insurance on our family, even though my dad was a small businessman and it couldn't have been cheap to pay the premiums. Credit goes to - ding ding ding! - good decision making. Mom has said some thngs in recent years that lead me to believe that there was actually a significant amount of expenses that insurance didn't pay, some of which they covered out of pocket, but there was also an outpouring of support from the small community in which I grew up, and people donated money to a fund to pay for my medical costs. Mom mentioned about five years later, I think, that there was some leftover money in the fund and that they donated it to City of Hope Medical Center, who had provided radiation treatments for me at no cost. Credit goes to - woohoo! - the kindness of strangers, beyond my control. I'm guessing that my chemotherapy was paid for by a combo of insurance and donated funds, but have no independent confirmation of that. So, my life experience in that situation regarding US health care was pretty positive. Outcome = life, Cost = covered.
My next experience with the health care system was when our children were born. We had no medical insurance where either of us worked; I can't even recall if it was available, and we just thought ourselves unlikely to need it, or whether it wasn't even offered. Anyway, we ended up paying for both prenatal care (it never occurred to us to go without) and the delivery and hospital bills out of pocket. The obstetricians, midwife, and hospitals involved were very cooperative, in our experience, and we were able to make payment arrangements. Outcome = two healthy children. Cost = not covered, but not debilitating.
My third experience with the health care system, and by now we knew we needed health insurance and had obtained it through our employers as soon as it was available, was when my wife had her brain aneurysm. This is another one of those events which most people either don't survive or have some permanent negative effects. Most of our bills were covered according to the terms of her medical coverage, her time away from work was compensated by the short term disability policy we'd purchased, and she made a full recovery. There was a minor challenge when the insurance company decided that the neurosurgeon was only going to be reimbursed at 50% because he was out of network, rather than 80%. Rather than rail against the system, we followed the appeals process and showed several paths to justify why the neurosurgeon should be paid at 80% even under the specific terms of the policy, and were successful. Outcome = full recovery, Cost = 80% covered, put the rest on the visa card to pay off over time.
So, you see, my experiences with medical care have been pretty positive on the whole, and those instances where things went the wrong way, we were able to work through with some positive attitude and action on our part.
When my children were in college, of course, I kept them covered on our health insurance policy. They could have gone off of it and used the college's health plan instead, but we opted not to go that way. When they left college, I purchased for each of them a "transitional" short term health policy that covered them until they had jobs which provided the opportunity to purchase their own.
There are people out there, obviously, who haven't had a positive experience in their encounters with hospitals, doctors and insurance companies. Their opinion in the current debate is probably going to be diametrically opposed to mine. I believe that there are some "tweaks" that can be done to help people afford the care they need, while they think the entire system is a mess.
In my opinion, those people mostly view their lives as a series of events which are beyond their control, and external and malicious forces are conspiring to deprive them of their right to health care.
I know that I'm gonna get the whammy from forces beyond my control every so often, so I control the things I'm able to to minimize their effects, at least in the health care arena.
Most of us, at one time or another in life, will encounter some major health challenge personally or through our family members. My own experience with this starts with my bout of cancer. For those of you who weren't around, the particular form of cancer I had is generally deadly, and I haven't run across too many accounts of people besides myself surviving it.
I was too young to know a whole lot of the details of how things were handled financially, but my parents carried health insurance on our family, even though my dad was a small businessman and it couldn't have been cheap to pay the premiums. Credit goes to - ding ding ding! - good decision making. Mom has said some thngs in recent years that lead me to believe that there was actually a significant amount of expenses that insurance didn't pay, some of which they covered out of pocket, but there was also an outpouring of support from the small community in which I grew up, and people donated money to a fund to pay for my medical costs. Mom mentioned about five years later, I think, that there was some leftover money in the fund and that they donated it to City of Hope Medical Center, who had provided radiation treatments for me at no cost. Credit goes to - woohoo! - the kindness of strangers, beyond my control. I'm guessing that my chemotherapy was paid for by a combo of insurance and donated funds, but have no independent confirmation of that. So, my life experience in that situation regarding US health care was pretty positive. Outcome = life, Cost = covered.
My next experience with the health care system was when our children were born. We had no medical insurance where either of us worked; I can't even recall if it was available, and we just thought ourselves unlikely to need it, or whether it wasn't even offered. Anyway, we ended up paying for both prenatal care (it never occurred to us to go without) and the delivery and hospital bills out of pocket. The obstetricians, midwife, and hospitals involved were very cooperative, in our experience, and we were able to make payment arrangements. Outcome = two healthy children. Cost = not covered, but not debilitating.
My third experience with the health care system, and by now we knew we needed health insurance and had obtained it through our employers as soon as it was available, was when my wife had her brain aneurysm. This is another one of those events which most people either don't survive or have some permanent negative effects. Most of our bills were covered according to the terms of her medical coverage, her time away from work was compensated by the short term disability policy we'd purchased, and she made a full recovery. There was a minor challenge when the insurance company decided that the neurosurgeon was only going to be reimbursed at 50% because he was out of network, rather than 80%. Rather than rail against the system, we followed the appeals process and showed several paths to justify why the neurosurgeon should be paid at 80% even under the specific terms of the policy, and were successful. Outcome = full recovery, Cost = 80% covered, put the rest on the visa card to pay off over time.
So, you see, my experiences with medical care have been pretty positive on the whole, and those instances where things went the wrong way, we were able to work through with some positive attitude and action on our part.
When my children were in college, of course, I kept them covered on our health insurance policy. They could have gone off of it and used the college's health plan instead, but we opted not to go that way. When they left college, I purchased for each of them a "transitional" short term health policy that covered them until they had jobs which provided the opportunity to purchase their own.
There are people out there, obviously, who haven't had a positive experience in their encounters with hospitals, doctors and insurance companies. Their opinion in the current debate is probably going to be diametrically opposed to mine. I believe that there are some "tweaks" that can be done to help people afford the care they need, while they think the entire system is a mess.
In my opinion, those people mostly view their lives as a series of events which are beyond their control, and external and malicious forces are conspiring to deprive them of their right to health care.
I know that I'm gonna get the whammy from forces beyond my control every so often, so I control the things I'm able to to minimize their effects, at least in the health care arena.