apparently this is that health care rant I’ve been storing up

[mizkit]

I started this post to say I’d just checked my Walk to Rivendell mileage sheet. I actually only have the last two 150-ish mile bits of Aragorn’s journey to complete for all the outward-bound stuff. I’ll finish that this /year/! But then I got dragged in another direction, which may be largely preaching to the choir. Perhaps I’ll put it behind a cut

Comments

[mythrana]

Very good post and some great points made.

[joycemocha]

I think my parents met the new animal that was health care insurance when I was about eleven years old or so, back in the late 60s. My DH had an individual catastrophic health insurance program when we got married in 1981; something he'd had for ten years starting with his stint as a dairy farmer. Certainly we were used to paying for our own bills and functioning without anything other than high-deductible bills at that time. Once he got the corporate job, though, we went on their healthcare (which was cheap, cheap, cheap in the early 80s).

The growth expenses of healthcare have happened during my lifetime, and it's not a pretty thing to contemplate.

[wortschmiedin]

Next to a number of other things, this post drives homoe to me once again: You are a darn good writer.

[mizkit]

*laughs* Well, thank you! :)

[feed_your_muse]

A very interesting post; horrific to think that people can lose everything at a time when they're extremely vulnerable just because they have to pay extortionate bills. Health care in England varies in quality. When I was a kid I used to have frequent ear infections/ tonsilitis which culminated in me getting it every six to eight weeks when I was eight. My regular doctor kept putting me on antibiotics, but it was a locum that got me in for the surgery that put a stop to the whole thing. It would have been horrendous trying to pay for it, mind. (Well, my parents would have paid for it, but still.)

Merry

[rachie203]

Wow, excellent post. I find myself as one of the unfortunate many in the social services that lost their jobs due to recent budget cuts in Illinois. With this job loss I find myself in the difficult situation of trying to figure out if I can afford health insurance. Thankfully there is now a COBRA subsidy that makes it more affordable, but this is capped at 9 months. I even attempted to get my own insurance, which turned out to be a joke.

I don't understand a system where people have to choose between having insurance to avoid bankruptcy if something happens and being able to make rent each month - let alone by groceries!

[mizkit]

Yeah, they've adjusted COBRA lately to make it marginally more tenable, but for such a *short* amount of time with regards to the current economy, and in view of most peoples' generally tenuous savings & financial status to begin with, it's not *much* more tenable than it used to be. It's madness.

And, of course, the people who have never had to choose between insurance and groceries/rent have very little grasp of how that situation can occur. It's not like my husband and I were poverty-level unemployed welfare recipients when we ended up in the position of no longer being able to afford health insurance...and neither are many, many others.