Just in case anyone here thinks that health insurance is actually about connecting you with the care you need when you need it, USA Today is here to disabuse you of that silly thought:
Last year, Dorie Griggs, a communications and faith consultant based in Roswell, Ga., purchased a high-deductible plan because she works freelance and the high-deductible plans were cheaper. Griggs has a cavernous hemangioma — or dilated blood vessels — in her brain that must be monitored every year with an MRI. Because the test is expensive — from $1,500 to $4,000, depending where a person lives — she decided to get the scan every two years.
She also put off a colonoscopy.
"Our insurance out-of-pocket is more than our mortgage every month," Griggs said.
Haviland theorized that people may not seek preventive exams because they fear what other expenses might surface during those exams. For example, a colonoscopy may lead to the removal of a polyp.
"This is where you cross your fingers and hope nothing goes wrong," Griggs said.
Yup, high-deductible "crapsurance" plans are most definitely causing Americans to "die quickly" in the manner of Grayson, because they force the struggling and poor to delay or personally deny themselves care -- the rich don't buy these plans and, when they do, they have enough money to pack away in a so-called health savings account so that they can pay for expenses when they do have a problem, or just continue accumulating wealth if they do not.
Of course, AHIP Thugstress Karen Ignagni enjoys a chance to lecture us stupid, uninformed Americans about the consequences of buying the crappy, immoral, unethical product she defends for a big-time living:
"People are choosing higher deductibles for lower premiums," said Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, which represents 1,300 companies providing health insurance to more than 200 million Americans.
It's important that they understand those lower premiums can mean higher doctors' bills, she said.
No, you horrible, horrible, horrible person: people aren't choosing higher deductibles for lower premiums, they're choosing high deductibles for still-high premiums because they can't afford anything else in the horrible, horrible, horrible private insurance market.
Until we have real Medicare for all that everyone is enrolled in at birth, people will slip through the cracks of this non-system system, and people will die. And their blood will be on Karen's hands, and all the other insurance company thugs.
Deal with it, GOP.