Today we had an employee meeting to talk about our new shiny health insurance plan for 2012. Premiums have dropped slightly, but deductible and out-of-pocket costs have gone up across the board. It's not so bad, though; if I put the $50/month premium savings into its own account, why, I could cover that out of pocket cost in only 13 short years! Goodness knows I'm no complainer.
The rundown on the new costs wasn't the real focus of the meeting, though. The insurance rep also pontificated on subjects including but not limited to:
1) The effects of the ACA on the insurance industry - These were all accompanied with graphs of scary lines pointing up and to the right and badly-drawn cartoons that someone in the insurance business must have, at some point, thought were funny. I heard no laughter.
2) How wonderful the US health care system is - And, of course, how awful national health care systems like Cuba's, Canada's, and the UK's are. After all, they're all national systems, so they're all equally terrible. I mean, just LOOK at this cartoon of a sad Cuban hooked up to this outdated medical equipment. The words "best health delivery system in the world" and "USA" were uttered in the same sentence without any apparent irony.
3) Why the cost of health care keeps rising many times faster than inflation or wages - It was this last subject that really grabbed my attention. Here are the reasons health costs are rising, according to an agent of the insurance companies:
3a) Government regulation (called "interference") at the state level
3b) The Affordable Care Act
3c) You, the insurance customer.
Realizing after a brief rant on each that no one in the room could do anything to change 3a or 3b, the insurance agent quickly moved on to what WE, the insured, could do to "help" the insurance companies keep costs down. Follow me beneath the Orange Julia Fractal to find out what she said.
Still with me? Great.
Yeap, you are the number one reason behind rising health insurance costs in this country. "But how can that be?", I hear you cry. "I can't help when or how I need medical assistance!"
I'll tell you what the insurance rep told me. I may, in places, paraphrase or use slightly less diplomatic language than she did.
You are a lazy freeloader. You care about no one's needs but your own. You deliberately and maliciously seek out new ways to cost the insurance company more money. You constantly ask for tests you don't need to treat problems that probably aren't even real. You're complacent and entitled, and you need to cut that out.
If you'd just exercise 30 minutes a day (you lazy slug), all of your health problems would evaporate. You wouldn't need antidepressants because depression is cured by exercise. You don't need prescriptions for sleeping pills because the real reason you can't sleep is that you drink 6 bottles of 5 Hour Energy a day. Really! Her friend did that, how can you even argue with a anecdote like that?
If you would just spend the time combing every bill and receipt you get from your hospital stay (after all, it's only 20-30 pages of 4 letter description-less codes and costs that you have to spend hours on the phone to identify) you'd find out that the biggest contributor to insurance company costs (after you, of course, you lazy slug) is the hospitals themselves. Yeap, hospitals exist first and foremost to defraud the insurance companies!
Did you know that? I didn't know that. Good thing she told us, huh?
That's right, hospitals love to commit fraud. They love it so much they do it deliberately and with wild, reckless abandon. But the insurance company can't afford to audit hospital bills. That would cut into the money they need to spend on medical care (which is already being squeezed by the completely unreasonable requirement by the ACA that 80% of their premiums go to medical costs). So it's your job to go over all those invoices with a fine-toothed comb. Did you know that 90% of all pregnant women get epidurals? 90%! And that even if you don't, the hospital still bills you for it? That proves they're out to commit fraud!
After all, you owe it to your insurance company to try and save them money in every way and spend as much of your own time as possible to reduce their costs. They are a benevolent organization that cares about people, after all. They don't want to have to raises costs, but they are forced to each year because you won't help out (you self-indulgent, megalomaniacal buffoon).
Why, if everyone in that meeting spent all of their spare time working to try to save the insurance company money, then the poor beleaguered thing wouldn't have to keep raising our rates and deductibles every year.
Oh, and by the way, you won't have your prescription drug cards until nearly the end of January, so in the meantime, just put your prescriptions on your credit card and they'll reimburse you when the cards get printed. (Really. "You've all got credit cards" is what she actually said.)
Well, that's the summary, anyway. She didn't put it quite like that and it took her the better part of an hour to say it all, but that was definitely the gist of things. Now you know who to blame for skyrocketing health care costs. It's you.
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Oh, this is slightly tangential, probably doesn't even belong in this diary, but I thought it was kind of a fun thought. Let's call it item 3d of the list up above; everyone loves 3d, right? Hollywood told me so.
3d) The CEO of my new insurance company got a salary bonus in 2010. It was about double his annual salary, which itself is about 25 times more than I make a year. I'm sure it was well-deserved. What's interesting, though, is that less than 10% of that single year's bonus would have paid the full cost of every single medical bill my wife and I have received since 2001. That includes 2 abdominal surgeries, neck surgery, prescription drugs and painkillers, antibiotics, psychological care and prescriptions associated with that and all the other various random doctor costs that are a part of everyday life, with enough money left over to pay for that prenatal test for spina bifida that I talked about in my last diary entry.
That's kind of a long point. Oh well. Probably not important. Off I go to figure out new ways to save that guy some money!