Hello...
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Our insurance premiums at the office just went up 56%. About three weeks before this happened, a nice lady came in and gave a presentation about the rising costs of healthcare. Bitch.
Dear Diary,
A nice woman came to the office about a month ago. She sat us all down in the conference room and planted her big, leather briefcase on the mahogany table. She flipped the golden clasps and flung it open, slowly--menacingly-- producing a large tube of lubricant and slipping it into the single patch pocket of her vintage Pendleton wool blazer.
She proceeded to stroll languidly around the room, sizing each of us up as she recited her well-rehearsed speil, snapping her surgical Latex® gloves onto her perfectly manicured hands and smiling as though she had a mouthful of the world's most delicious candy.
Her hair was...monumental.
She approached Bob, our erstwhile Director, from the rear, placing her gloved hands gingerly upon his shoulders and speaking in soothing tones. Bob flushed red with embarrassment, and as she moved on, he clumsily brushed the Latex® dust from the collar of his shirt.
The woman spoke of frivolous malpractice lawsuits, slowly squeezing a peanut-sized glob of silvery, glistening gel onto the tip of her long, slender finger.
"I'm not saying that your premiums will be going up," she said wryly as she spun the cap back onto the tube with her thumb, "I'm just here to show you the kinds of issues that we deal with on a daily basis...as we struggle to ensure that you receive the best coverage for your dollar."
After about an hour, we all felt like we were sufficiently prepared for whatever was headed our way. We knew it was gonna hurt, but we knew it would have been worse if we didn't just accept it and...as she reminded us many times that day...just relax.
A few weeks later, we found out about the 56% increase. My health insurance payment is now almost double that of my mortgage.
Then comes today, when a man with an excruciatingly bad toupé* came along to explain our new benefits package to us. You see, our company had to drop down to a lower level of insurance for the employees...one that is only a mere 35% more expensive than the superior program we had a month ago.
He tried to give us examples of how we could save money by doing things like giving ourselves allergy shots instead of getting them from the allergist's office. My female co-worker asked him if we were also supposed to give ourselves flu shots in the ass, and he said no, but that he would really like to see her doing that.
He really said that.
But I digress.
Man, I have horrid allergies, and I work closely with lots and lots of horses during the summer. I am horrifically allergic to horses. However, my weekly allergy shots keep that in check. The cost of these shots, however, have just gone from $20 per month to $160 per month. WTF!?
But I digress, again.
So I feel the hands on my shoulders, and that uncomfortable feeling of something being...not right. I try to figure out who it is that is making me so uncomfortable. Is it the insurance company? Is it the drug company? Is it the doctor? I thought I had my prostate checked last month?
This may sound cantankerous ;) but are all of these groups simpy in cahoots with each other? Can't the unholy alliance of doctors, drug manufacturers and insurance companies pretty much leap-frog each other to bigger boats and better boob jobs for their wives? Why does the insurance guy have such a bad toupé? Does his wife hate him that much?
I NEED ANSWERS!
(I should note that malpractice lawsuits aren't designed to bring the doctors down, they are there because attorneys want their cut. They want the Medical Axis of Evil to be a foursome.)
And so, can any real healthcare reform happen in a country where these people are allowed to basically price-fix in such an elusive manner? How do you address something like this without busting it down and starting over?
I know the issue is that so many Americans have no insurance, and I should be glad that I have access to even this expensive stuff, but we'll never insure everyone until we get a handle on these greedy bastards.
*He's like, fifty-something years old, has a gray beard, and sports a beach-bum-blonde toupé that he cannot stop fucking with as he talks. His curly gray sideburns look like thick rolls of barbed-wire sticking out from underneath a September haystack.