Life Without Medical Insurance

Well, now that I'm out of quarantine, I can write again.

I spent last weekend in Houston, Texas, visiting my friend Ryan with another friend Ryan (no relation). The weather was gorgeous - sunny and dry in the 70s the whole time we were there. Nothing beats getting on a plane in beautiful sunshine and coming home to find it's 3 degrees.

(Travel anecdote: When we went through security in Grand Rapids, they took my toothpaste away. Clearly, a dissheveled college grad with a tube of toothpaste poses a threat to national security. I offered to dump half of it to get it under the 3.5 ounce limit, but they shot me down. My Colgate presumably went to some impoverished airport security person's kid that night. A few days later, we went through airport security in Houston. To my horror, the guard there plucked my bag from the x-ray machine and pulled out a pair of scissors. Not tiny scissors - big, sharp orange Fiskars scissors. Good scissors. Scissors which I had no idea were in there. After my initial shock and worry of ending up in Guantanamo Bay, I nervously admitted I had no idea how the scissors got there. They took them and, presumably, they went to some impoverished airport security person's kid that night. I have no doubt they were in there the whole time, and I soon recalled that the Grand Rapids security person had made a joke about the scissors, which I met with a confused laugh because I was completely unaware I had them. He saw the scissors and left them, but took my toothpaste. Moral of the story: Toothpaste is more dangerous than scissors.)

Anyway, not long after I returned to the Michigan Winter, I came down with a nasty cold. My nose ran all day, non-stop on Monday, and something was wrong in my chestal-region. Wheezing, coughing, hacking, thick-multi-colored stuff coming out, I was pretty convinced it was my annual bout with Bronchitis. Mom encouraged me to visit a doctor. Since I hadn't been to one in a year, and since I had an upcoming job interview, and since this might be something serious, I told myself I'd cut my losses and visit the doc. Mom told me to go the Spectrum Pavillion because, she and I assumed, it would be a similar price to the clinic up the road and there wouldn't be a wait.

So I drove on icy roads in a drugged stupor to the Spectrum Palace of Medicine. I put in my name, was given one of those hospital shirt-smock-gown things, and was placed in a room. It wasn't busy, but they still managed to make me wait. I think they forgot about me, because the attendant told me it would be just one minute and it turned into twenty. I fell asleep, and they woke me up and moved me across the hall.

Finally, the doctor saw me and, after a little banter, informed me that I was suffering from what they call "The common cold," just a considerably vicious strain of it. Since the cold is a virus, antibiotics wouldn't do me any good. He told me I'd be fine in a few days, and said I should pick up some Claritin D. A nurse came around and gave me a thick packet of information that I'll never read, detailing my common cold. I went to check out, and awaited the price tag. I wondered if it would be $75, or at most $100. The nurse behind the counter looked it up in a little book, and gave me the total: $135. I asked her if she was serious (I'm normally very polite, but when I'm ill, I get downright belligerent). She told me she was, and I begrudgingly handed over cash to pay for it all.

As I walked out, I realized this: I paid $135, or ten hours of wages, to be told I had a cold, nothing more.

And my question is, how is that economical? I have a financial cushion. I live with my parents. I'm not paying rent or a mortgage. I can make it work, but not everybody can. As attractive as socialized medicine may be, I don't think that's the answer. The government isn't going to make things better for everyone in the system. I need only to think about how long I have to sit at the secretary of state's office to renew my driver's license, or about how it costs the government $300 for a hammer, or how we still can't find Osama Bin Laden, to realize the government needs a lesson in stewardship before we hand over our health care system.

Health Insurance

When I turned 23 in February, I was booted from my parents health insurance coverage. In those 23 years, I mooched off dad's insurance as I battled chicken pox, numerous colds, allergies, several bouts with bronchitis, a spat with scarlet fever, an outpatient sinus thing, and zero broken bones. (Actually, I think I broke my coccyx falling off a trampoline in the sixth grade, but it never got treated. Still sore. It's probably out of whack, growing into a tail or something, but I'll deal with that when I'm sixty.) In the eight months since then, I've lived a care-free insurance-free life. There are good things and bad things about this.

Pros:
1. For starters, I don't have any dental coverage. This means I don't have to go to the dentist. I hate the dentist. Actually, I like my dentist. He's a righteous dude. I just don't like the several minutes I spend with his assistant beforehand. Always asking you questions with their fingers in your mouth while they stab your gums... I digress.

2. The second and final pro is that I'm not having money garnished from my paycheck. This means more money for thrilling, life-threatening, and all around bad-for-health activities like skydiving and smoking (I've devoted equal amounts of money and time to each), and less money wasted on keeping myself alive and kicking.

Cons:
I guess now that you mention it (and you did, I heard you), both of those are cons. My teeth, I assume, are slowly decaying into near-british disarray, and I don't have any funds to keep myself out of debt while I battle sprained ankles and lung cancer (You know, from the skydiving and smoking, sometimes simultaneously.) I'm just a bad dive away from a life of debt. Or a car accident. There are a lot of bad drivers out there.

And so it goes that I'm on the hunt for health coverage, and I have some sympathies for anyone who goes through this process. It's not fun. The system isn't set up for you to understand it. The system is set up for, well, the system to understand it.

I'm in the position where I have asthma prescriptions that run at least $100 a month. (That's cable, internet, and phone service with the Comcast Triple Play! But only for a year. This is a whole different rant - or is it?) And so I'm trying to find a way to get prescriptions covered. This, I'm discovering, isn't an economical possibility.

They ask you questions - you a dude? You sick? You smoke? (I really don't, so don't go telling your parents or mine that I do) Ever had malaria? Ever dated someone with malaria? Any cousins with Scoliosis? That kind of thing. Every time you say yes, you'll pay another $10 a month. They need to make money, and you being sick all the time isn't going to help that. Sorry guys, insurance companies aren't there to help you, they exist to make money. Which is why they have a deductible. Your deductible is basically the number where the insurance company says, "Well, we've let them do our job long enough, and I guess we can start doing what they pay us for now." They don't cover a thing until you've paid your deductible's worth in medical expenses. Then, they often still don't cover everything. Seriously. I didn't know this until someone explained it to me last week.

My point: They don't make this easy. I can see why so many people live without health insurance. Lots of people can't afford it, and lots of people can't justify it. More and more, I think I'm one of the latter. People choose to live without it. And for now, that's what I'm doing. For people who genuinely need help, it's there.

Unfortunately, I have a job, so I don't qualify
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