I am so pissed right now! We just had our annual health care meeting at my company and let me tell you, the situation is grim. It seems that we will be starting a transition from traditional health care to health savings account (HSAs). HSAs are a combination of a 401k and a flexible spending account, which as we were told is great for young and healthy people. If you get sick though, good luck and good-bye! In defense of my company, they have paid for all benefits up until this point, but the insurance provider is forcing them to raise our premiums and co-payments. I do not fault the company, but instead my anger goes to the real culprit. The Rethuglicans in Congress and the White House.
The CFO mentioned that Congress passed the legislation that created these health accounts last year. What was the only major health care related legislation passed last year? You guessed it: the Medicare Prescription Drug. After doing a quick search, I have found several government and healthcare industry sites that "explain" what these accounts are and how they work. But I found the following site (
http://www.msainfo.net/) to be very interesting, since they invoke the specter of Ted Kennedy on the bottom right of the web site. Disgusting!
"Don't pay more for health care just because this man wants you to! Get even with Ted. Get an HSA plan!"
I also found the following WP article http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62631-2004Oct25.html) that gives these accounts a tepid evaluation, but the thing that spoke to me was the following quote: "That means some may wait until Monday morning to have a doctor look at their sore throat instead of making a more expensive emergency room visit on Saturday night." This is almost verbatim what my CFO said during the meeting, basically blaming us for the rising costs of healthcare. How about identifying the real reasons for the spiraling costs and addressing these issues? Anyone who comes to DailyKos knows that the real causes can be found with the insurance and pharmaceutical companies that help draft the Medicare Bill that the Chimp-in-Chief signed into law.
During the meeting all I could think about was how could anyone sitting in that room honestly think that this was a good idea. I wanted to stand up and scream at everyone in the room, beg them to wake up before we lose everything. Instead, I bitched with some colleagues and wrote this diary. Thanks for letting me vent! And lets take back the Congress on Tuesday to fix all that they have broken (again!).