Coping with and without Health Insurance
This recent article in the New York Times clearly highlights the disconnect between consumers and the US health system. These individual stories not only highlight the personal issues that these people face, but the economic concern that these people should be recognized as presenting to the US economy. These are stories about people in their economic prime who instead of being able live life and focus the contributions they can make to their families, communities and the wider economy through their work, worry more about the risks and complications of living with or without Health Insurance, knowing that they are probably quite literally one medical incident away from potential financial disaster.
The New York Times introduces the story as follows and I quote.
“Much of the debate about health care reform focuses on people who don’t have insurance. But as Karen Barrow explores during the latest Patient Voices series, even people with insurance coverage are struggling with bills, confusing policies and red tape.
Six men and women share their experiences with health coverage and insurance issues. You’ll meet Tasha Huebner, 41, who found dealing with the insurance company worse than dealing with breast cancer. “With insurance, it was always a big surprise, what are they going to deny next?” she says.
Once she called her insurance company to find out why a $5,000 surgery bill had been denied. She was told it was because she had one too many nurses in the operating room during her surgery. “At that point I hung up on my insurance representative that I was talking to,” she says. “I didn’t even know what to do with that.”
Zoraida Reyes, 46, is a small business owner who was forced to cut health insurance, including her own. “I work six days a week, and I can’t afford insurance,” she says. “You can imagine the people who have a lot less than me, they’re probably worse off.”
And there’s Carl Arrington, 58, who lost his health insurance after his Internet company closed. Instead of paying for health insurance, he decided to invest in his health, changing his diet and exercising more. “If you’re in your 50s or 60s and you don’t have medical insurance and you don’t get it through your employer, it’s going to cost you two or three thousand dollars a month. With that kind of money I could see a doctor every week.”
Adrienne Schroeder, 31, has high-deductible health insurance through her husband’s job but is saddled with medical debt as a result of four pregnancies in six years, including two that ended in miscarriages. “Since we have insurance we should not be worried about having a baby or having a miscarriage and be stressed about how long it takes to pay it off,” she says. “Our daughter is near 18 months, and we’re nowhere near paying off these hospital bills.
The majority of the people in this story are representative of a Medical Traveler demographic that are coming to New Zealand in gradually increasing numbers for non-urgent or elective medical procedures as an alternative to the high cost of care in the US.
Source: The Medical Traveller
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