Some people just don't seem to get it, but I do.
Some people just don't seem to get it, but I do. Because my health insurance plan sucks.
And since this is a diary, I will make this journal entry as personal as I can without giving away too much information about myself or place of work.
My health insurance premiums being deducted from my paychecks was something that I just chalked up as inevitable. I've been receiving it and paying for it since November 2007, two months after starting my job as a newspaper reporter, prior to being promoted to editor.
Of course, with the upward mobility I've experienced over the approximately two years I've been hitting the presses, I've seen slight increases in my compensation. Call me a capitalist, but I am all for using my talents, and being rewarded for them, especially since I've worked pretty damn hard to learn and be successful - putting in long nights during elections, school board/township/city council meetings - even when they were excruciatingly boring.
But this summer, after my official promotion to editor, I got some unwelcome news.
My insurance costs each month would be going up. And I'm not talking about a 10 or 15-percent increase, I'm talking more like a 95-percent increase. My company, which will go unnamed, but rightly so, includes the acronym BS (hint, the S stands for shield), jacked up my monthly payments from $82 a month to $160 a month.
Like I said, about 95-percent.
Now the real disheartening thing about this to me, is that after paying $82 for 19 months, equalling $1,558 forked over to the company, I used the insurance once. That was this past June when I had bronchitis and had to be checked out at a small clinic ran by the hospital here in my town.
The bill was $56, and I spent maybe five minutes with the doc and walked away with three prescriptions (pretty fuckin' ridiculous, but true). How much of that bill did the insurance cover?
$8.
I know I know conservatives (none of whom will unfortunately read this, since it is on dK), if it were catastrophic, I'd be thanking my insurance company, or so they say. But for 19 months I shelled over some dough, only depended on insurance for 1/7 of my one doctor visit, and how am I repaid?
By the bastards pretty much doubling my premiums. And said premiums actually nulled my latest raise, meaning I am already having to be that guy bickering about his paycheck. Thanks assholes.
I checked out other companies and you know what? Either the plans, or the costs weren't any better.
Fuck health insurance companies. And fuck the Congressman and Senators taking money from them.