My recent note to PA's Arlen Specter to encourage him to step up...
Dear Senator Specter,
I recently left a job (which provided quality health insurance for my family) to join our family's small business in Washington DC. Since then, I've struggled to secure an affordable health insurance plan for my wife, myself and our 10-month old son.
A decent group plan from United Health Care (UHC) listed premiums, initially, at just over $1,000/month. After we applied, they rated us and so our quoted premiums jumped to nearly $2.2k/month (over $26,000/year). Although we couldn't afford it, we picked up this plan anyway (at least for the short-term) just to ensure we had coverage that couldn't be denied.
It's awful to feel pressured to buy a "life essential" that you can't afford because you fear it might be your only option. It's the sort of thing that breaks the back of small business owners and working families who aren't blessed with employer-provided insurance or personal riches.
Since picking up this cost-prohibitive plan, I've tried to apply for some more affordable individual plans...
Please read on for how well that worked. Not!
Hi folks,
Some of you may know about my recent (personal) struggles with the health insurance industry -- detailed in my story below. It's helped to drive home for my family (viscerally) how broken America's health insurance system really is. It's also given us deeper respect for every politician out there fighting along with President Obama to put a public option on the table for us.
These politicians are fighting for us against a barrage of lies, smears, and fear-mongering that's fueled in part (probably in large part) by a health insurance industry resistant to change to the status quo -- a status quo that lets them put the screws to tens of millions of ordinary Americans, like me and my family, and profit fabulously from it.
My story (below) is just one among millions like it in our country today. And it pales in comparison to the much harsher reality that many more Americans face when they're sick and lack (or lose) coverage, or simply poorer than middle class folks like us.
I just shared my story with Pennsylvania's Senator Arlen Specter to try to underscore for him why I hope he'll muster the will (and courage) to support a public health insurance option.
I'd love your thoughts. And -- if you feel so inspired -- please share my story with anyone you know who still doesn't support the President's fight to fix our broken healthcare system. Ultimately, this is a fight for all of us -- and even folks who are interested mostly in their own bottom lines (and own back sides) might just see that this fight's for them too.
Kindest regards,
Ian
-----------------
Dear Senator Specter,
I recently left a job (which provided quality health insurance for my family) to join our family's small business in Washington DC. Since then, I've struggled to secure an affordable health insurance plan for my wife, myself and our 10-month old son.
A decent group plan from United Health Care (UHC) listed premiums, initially, at just over $1,000/month. After we applied, they rated us and so our quoted premiums jumped to nearly $2.2k/month (over $26,000/year). Although we couldn't afford it, we picked up this plan anyway (at least for the short-term) just to ensure we had coverage that couldn't be denied.
It's awful to feel pressured to buy a "life essential" that you can't afford because you fear it might be your only option. It's the sort of thing that breaks the back of small business owners and working families who aren't blessed with employer-provided insurance or personal riches.
Since picking up this cost-prohibitive plan, I've tried to apply for some more affordable individual plans -- one with UHC and another with Blue Cross - Blue Shield (BC-BS). The options were underwhelming to say the least, and more like morally deficient. The UHC plan offered next to no maternity coverage (which is a major gap given that we're trying to have another child) and the BC-BS plan offered decent maternity coverage, but put a $1,500 yearly cap on Rx and offered no coverage for organ transplants.
My initial response to this was "Wow! My choice is motherhood or my kidneys!" The BC-BS plan seemed like the lesser of two evils because (God-willing) motherhood is more imminent and (also God-willing) we won't need more than $1,500 per year in Rx or any organ transplants. But, this is supposed to be "insurance" against the unexpected, so it's terrible to face a choice with these kinds of gaps, or -- to try to cover the gaps -- to have to eat the extra costs to pay for multiple plans. The latter is a luxury that -- at nearly $1,200 per month plus thousands in deductibles -- I suspect many people can't afford.
Fortunately, my choice was made much simpler for me in the past few days. BC-BS denied our application. To add insult to injury, they refused to offer an explanation for the denial when we called to find out why. (They were gracious enough to offer to mail us one, though, so we'll hold our breath and wait). So now, unless we stick with a prohibitively pricey $26,000+/year group plan, or attempt to squeeze water from the stone of the other carriers that offer more meager maternity benefits, maternity coverage is no longer an option for us.
I don't know if you're motivated by moral disdain for this sort of thing. If not, I'm hopeful that your disdain for burdensome taxes might encourage you to respond. Based on my experiences above, I can see clearly now how our current health care crisis levies huge taxes on ordinary Americans. We're taxed when we're forced to pay more than we can afford for something as essential to human life as maternity health coverage. We're taxed when we waste hours sifting through insurance company fine print to spot where they'll deny our claims -- before we sign up, pay our premiums, and are then told to pay out-of-pocket for care they won't cover. And, we're taxed by the toll this all takes on our peace of mind and reserves of energy as we wrestle with intractable insurance companies to provide coverage that's decent/moral and affordable.
To address some of this, I'd love to see a public health insurance option added to my mix of current health care choices. I hope you'll offer your support here. My current "free-market" options, unfortunately, undermine some of the very freedoms I think we should aim for in America. In my case, they've restricted my freedom to launch into a new career in our family business. They also limit the freedom of consumer choice that would benefit the pocket-books of most Americans -- especially given that a government option wouldn't suffer the overhead of share-holder profits or inflated salaries for insurance company execs.
I hope that you'll support millions of working families and small business owners like me by standing up over the next few weeks to support a public health insurance option. On behalf of the mother of my prospective second child and the continued good health of my kidneys, I thank you in advance for your support.
Sincerely,
Ian Mishalove