Any person who lives in this country sees the folly of what health care is: a profit machine that exploits people for simply being sick. Its really that simple. The health industry uses our fear of illness to manipulate us into making decisions that do not make economic sense. We are brainwashed into thinking that doctors are gods, somehow believing that medicine can magically be our knight in shining armour, sweeping in and saving us from our sickness with our treasured health insurance benefits, from what ever source their stem from. (work, pension, etc.....)
There could be nothing further from the truth.
JUMP
As we see the continued debate in D.C on what "reform" should be and what it will cost, I have lost all hope that there is anyone that really cares about the human side of this equation. And we have to think about what this means. I personally feel that change will only come when WE all decide that this sham, folly and pyramid scheme called "health insurance" is not for any of us, and we choose to remove ourselves from the game. It has nothing to do with health and less and less to do with insurance, or assurance!
Let me tell you a story about me, and how I learned this week, 2 weeks short of my 40th birthday, that I cannot BUY a health insurance policy because no one will sell one to me! I have come to realize that the problem ISNT health care as it currently exists: its the structure of our healthcare itself that is to blame. "reform" will only feed the beast. I think instead its time to start thinking about killing it.
I am a mega healthy 40 year old man. I do Bikram Yoga daily. I run marathons. I eat a low fat, primarily organic, no red meat diet that incorporates vitamin therapy and twice daily meditation. I am at the perfect weight for my height. There is no cancer in my family history. The complication: I also have taken prescription drugs (that have been around since the 1960's) for a seizure disorder since I was a teen, and have NO problems with my condition, which is easily controlled with medication. I still meet all published primary underwriting guidelines for "preferred best" insurance coverage. YET, I was rejected coverage because I simply take a medication which is "on a list for automatic denial". They DO NOT care about me.
I'm self employed. I have been on Cobra coverage for a total of 3 years (18 months federal, 18 months state). I now have no other options for insurance that I can afford (they did offer me a $929 Hippa plan.....). I live in California, where even the program that the state sponsors for the "un-insurable" has a 3 month waiting list! And costs between $500 and $600 dollars per month! Its amazing to think that I could be un-insurable, when someone 10 years younger than me that smokes, eats like shit, doesnt exercise, etc....... WOULD get insurance. Someone tell me where the rationality is in this system! Why is this so? Because only the cost of the sickness is considered, not the cost of the wellness. The model is broken, EVEN IF we reform insurance as we are currently talking about. Anything short of single payer is merely pissing in the wind, benefitting those who stand to only make money off this "reform" proposal.
So what do you do? I COULD take the hippa plan offered to me by healthnet. Total cost: $929 per month. For a single healthy man. Is this rational? Over 10K per year: JUST IN CASE? OR, do I choose to say F-it and be courageous, buy my drugs thru the mail (or in Mexico or Canada), and then protect my assets under a corporate umbrella, so that if I did ever get cancer, etc....... I would simply go to the emergency room, and then not have any assets for them to collect on, potentially destroying my credit in the process, but at least not losing everything I have worked for my entire life...... because I got sick. (the ironic thing is: this could happen EVEN IF I had insurance!!) It's dirty to think that I would have to be that guy, but given the corner I am backed into, what are my choices? If they can play dirty pool with me, I can play it right back. Do we all realize that we have this power?
These are unreasonable choices. It looks as though all of us aged 18-55 are going to be left out of any health care reform now that the public option is gone (admit it everybody: its gone). Besides that, there are countless loopholes that avoid any real reform in the bill, and more each day carefully crafted to either keep or WORSEN even the current status quo. I find myself torn. I am a Democrat, a supporter of Obama, a liberal and a progressive. My vote in 08 was by in large FOR Health Reform. And I now say that it is time to torch this reform, no matter if it comes off as a defeat or not. Its a pile of crap, now focused more on abortion than it is on health. If it passes, just who would it be a victory for? Certainly NOT sick people. Or healthy people. Only RICH people. And the anti-abortion crowd.
I for one am checking out. (I really have no options anyway). I will be choosing to seek and create my own solutions. I am shopping for alternative health care coverage that suits ME. Accupuncture, chiropractic, vitamin therapy, blood testing........ all things that allow me to KEEP MYSELF HEALTHY, monitor my health, not my sickness, and I will not wait for illness to come, and then seek help. It is time for all of us to become our own doctors. If each of us concentrated on our own health and wellness and were engaged with it on a daily basis, it would be the greatest health reform of all time, and it wouldn't require a single stinking vote in Washington D.C.
Reform in this country is not only going to come from sickness reform. It is going to come from WELLNESS reform. For those of us, who already are, or who may become the pioneers of this movement, the characteristic we share is the knowledge that WE have much more power than we realize to shape our health and avoid getting sick in the first place. YOU HAVE THAT POWER. Until the establishment sees us walking away from them BY CHOICE, they will never change to do anything for us. its time to stop buying into the bullshit of the drug, hospital, medical device and worst of all insurance company propaganda.
It is time to start to vote with our dollars. I know many of you may say I'm crazy. That "what if you got.......". Yes there is that risk. But I just don't know if they would be there for me anyway. So its time to take the situation into my own hands and devote my health care dollar into not getting sick in the first place. The solution to health care in this country resides in each of our hands. Not thru health care, but thru wellness, which EACH of us have the ability to choose. And its for the most part FREE. Yes, the food costs a little more. But its worth it. You feel better. You look better. You are more productive. You have less worry, as you are in control! And in my case, it SAVES me money. Why give almost a thousand dollars a month to a health insurance company "just in case" when I could take a fraction of that, invest it in my own health directly, daily and personally, and build a better life for myself?
Thoughts from the peanut gallery?